Debye versus Einstein

So how closely do the Debye and Einstein models correspond to experiment? Surprisingly close, but Debye is correct at low temperatures whereas Einstein is not. How different are the models? To answer that question one would naturally plot the two on the same set of axes... except one can't. Both the Einstein model and the Debye model provide a functional form for the heat capacity. They are models, and no model is without a scale. A scale relates the model to its real-world counterpart. One can see that the scale of the Einstein model, which is given by

is . And the scale of the Debye model is , the Debye temperature. Both are usually found by fitting the models to the experimental data. (The Debye temperature can theoretically be calculated from the speed of sound and crystal dimensions.) Because the two methods approach the problem from different directions and different geometries, Einstein and Debye scales are not the same, that is to say

which means that plotting them on the same set of axes makes no sense. They are two models of the same thing, but of different scales. If one defines Einstein temperature as

then one can say

and, to relate the two, we must seek the ratio

The Einstein solid is composed of single-frequency quantum harmonic oscillators, . That frequency, if it indeed existed, would be related to the speed of sound in the solid. If one imagines the propagation of sound as a sequence of atoms hitting one another, then it becomes obvious that the frequency of oscillation must correspond to the minimum wavelength sustainable by the atomic lattice, .

which makes the Einstein temperature

and the sought ratio is therefore

Now both models can be plotted on the same graph. Note that this ratio is the cube root of the ratio of the volume of one octant of a 3-dimensional sphere to the volume of the cube that contains it, which is just the correction factor used by Debye when approximating the energy integral above.

Debye temperature table

Even though the Debye model is not completely correct, it gives a good approximation for the low temperature heat capacity of insulating, crystalline solids where other contributions (such as highly mobile conduction electrons) are negligible. For metals, the electron contribution to the heat is proportional to , which at low temperatures dominates the Debye result for lattice vibrations. In this case, the Debye model can only be said to approximate the lattice contribution to the specific heat. The following table lists Debye temperatures for several pure elements:

Manganese Nickel Platinum Silicon

Silicon

410 K 450 K 240 K

Aluminium 428 K Berylium Cadmium Carbon Cesium Chromium Copper Gold Iron Lead 1440 K 209 K 2230 K 38 K 630 K 343.5 K 170 K 470 K 105 K

Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, it is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon, the nonmetal directly above it in the periodic table, but more reactive than germanium, the metalloid directly below it in the table...

645 K

Silver Tantalum Tin (white) Titanium Tungsten Zinc

215 K 240 K 200 K 420 K 400 K 327 K

The Debye model's fit to experimental data is often phenomenologically improved by allowing the Debye temperature to become temperature dependent; for example, the value for water ice increases from about 222 K to 300 K as the temperature goes from Absolute zero to about 100 K.