Jacques Friedel and the physics of metals and alloys

Understand

This is an introduction to the theoretical physics of metals for students and physicists from other specialities.

• Certain simple consequences of the Fermi statistics in pure metals are first addressed, namely the Peierls distortion, Kohn anomalies and the Labb\'e-Friedel distortion.
• Then the physics of dilute alloys is discussed.
• The analogy with nuclear collisions was a fruitful starting point, which suggested one should analyse the effects of impurities in terms of a scattering problem with the introduction of phase shifts.