Dimension of an optimum impurity cluster and multiple-occupancy corrections in the theory of scattering of vibrational excitations in a solid solution

A relationship is derived for the correlation length L determining the size of the region in a solid solution in which excitations are scattered coherently. The correlation length depends on the fraction of impurity atoms x in the solid solution and the lattice dimension d. In the physical analysis of single-particle scattering processes in the solid solution and calculations, it is sufficient to take into account clusters with the number of cells n corresponding to the correlation volume L ^d . A theoretical analysis is illustrated by calculations of the spectral functions of the solid solution at different values of x and n. The multiple-occupancy corrections (polynomials in powers of x) to scattering diagrams are calculated using the method of sequential breaking apart of the interaction lines in the diagrams for the self-energy part. The method used was previously applied to the case of scattering by a single impurity. In this paper, the efficiency of the method is checked for scattering by multi-impurity clusters. It is demonstrated that the method can be useful in analyzing and estimating the contributions of scattering diagrams.