Abstract

If one is to choose a single physical property of importance in optical applications in which metals differ markedly from other mirror substrate materials, the obvious choice is thermal conductivity. The overwhelming reason for this difference is that the valence electrons in metals are free of the influence of the individual atoms. In dielectric solids the valence electrons are an integral part of the interatomic bond; they are tightly captured by pairs or very small groups of neighboring atoms. The transport properties of metals can be fairly accurately calculated by assuming that the electrons behave as a dense gas cloud and by applying appropriate statistical mechanics theories.

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