Theory of impurity scattering: Interstitial impurities

A framework for studying impurity scattering in dilute, non-magnetic, metal alloys can be developed from a knowledge of the exact electronic eigenstates of a single impurity in an otherwise perfect lattice of muffin tin potentials. Such an approach has been developed for systems in which the impurity occupies a substitutional site of the lattice, as will be discussed by Coleridge, Lee, Harris, and other speakers of this conference. In this paper, motivated by recent experimental studies of Dingle temperature anisotropies induced by hydrogen impurities in copper, we will discuss the analogous treatment of scattering by interstitial impurities. In contrast to a substitutional impurity, an interstitial impurity introduces an additional scattering site into the lattice. Whereas the substitutional impurity wavefunctions can be described in terms of the same structure factors as can the Bloch wavefunctions for the pure host lattice, the interstitial impurity wavefunctions depend upon additional structure factors appropriate to the new scattering geometry. These additional structure factors appear in the transition matrix for impurity-induced scattering between Bloch states of the host lattice, and consequently in the weight factors involved in a partial wave analysis of the Dingle temperature anisotropies.