Quantum phases of Bose-Fermi mixtures in optical lattices

Molecular Orbital Energy Diagrams

The vacuum level denotes the energy threshold required for an electron to escape from a material surface. It is usually positioned above the conduction band of a semiconductor and acts as a benchmark for comparing electron energies within various materials.
Electron affinity in semiconductors refers to the energy gap between the minimum of its conduction band and the vacuum level and it is a critical parameter in determining how easily a semiconductor can accept additional electrons.
The work...

In the macroscopic world, objects that are large enough to be seen by the naked eye follow the rules of classical physics. A billiard ball moving on a table will behave like a particle; it will continue traveling in a straight line unless it collides with another ball, or it is acted on by some other force, such as friction. The ball has a well-defined position and velocity or well-defined momentum, p = mv, which is defined by mass m and velocity v at any given moment. This is the typical...

Overview of Molecular Orbital Theory

Following the work of Ernest Rutherford and his colleagues in the early twentieth century, the picture of atoms consisting of tiny dense nuclei surrounded by lighter and even tinier electrons continually moving about the nucleus was well established. This picture was called the planetary model since it pictured the atom as a miniature “solar system” with the electrons orbiting the nucleus like planets orbiting the sun. The simplest atom is hydrogen, consisting of a single proton as the nucleus...

The Fermi-Dirac function is represented by an S-shaped curve indicating the probability of an energy state being occupied by an electron at a given temperature. The Fermi level is the energy level at which there is a fifty percent chance of finding an electron, and it is positioned between the lower-energy valence band and the higher-energy conduction band.
At absolute zero temperature, electrons fill all energy states up to the Fermi level, leaving upper states empty. As the temperature rises,...