Conduction electron interactions in sodium and potassium studied by magnetic resonance techniques Christopher D. Latham Department of Physics, Stocker Road, University of Exeter, EX4 4QL, UK. Abstract Pure sodium consists of a mixture of body centred cubic (BCC) and hexagonal close packed (HCP) crystals at low temperatures and these two phases exhibit subtly di?erent many body e?ects despite their almost identical conduction electron densities. This thesis represents a ?rst attempt to unravel the di?erences in the values of the many body parameters which characterize the description of the two phases in terms of the Fermi liquid theory. Fresh theoretical estimates of several many body parameters are presented and shortcomings in earlier theoretical work are highlighted. It has been found that the cause of these e?ects can be attributed to the di?erent and anisotropic phonon spectra in the two crystal phases. This has little e?ect on the lowest order many body parameters; the cyclotron e?ective masss, m * c, the paramagnetic susceptibility, ?p and the Landau-Silin Fermi liquid theory spin coe?cient, B0; but the second spin coe?cient B1 is very di?erent in the two crystal phases; it also seems likely that it is highly anisotropic. This di?erence leads to the observation of splittings in the microwave transmission spin wave spectra and di?erent spin wave coalescence angles for the two phases. Experimental results of measurements on sodium are presented. The conduction electron spin resonance (CESR), observed by the 35 GHz microwave transmission spectometer at Exeter, is split into two distinct lines which can be identi?ed with the two crystal phases present. A continuum region between the lines indicates that there is some averaging of electron spins among crystal grains or there may be some sodium present in an intermediate, faulted crystal phase in the samples. These observations con?rm the earlier work of Myler (1982), who used re?ection methods, and demonstrate with exceptional clarity, the presence of the two crystal phases. Analysis of the microwave transmission spectra, in various ?eld orientations, of spin waves, Gantmakher-Kaner oscillations, and cyclotron wave signals shows no observable di?er¬ences between the two phases of the quantities m * c, ?p and B0. The estimated values, con?rmed by spin wave measurements, of B1 are -0.01 ± 0.01 in BCC sodium and -0.05 ± 0.01 in HCP sodium at 5 K. The strong possibility of anisotropy in B1 may result in ambiguity in the values obtained from spin wave measurements depending on the details of the methods used to solve for the various quantities. For the ?rst time the microwave frequency size e?ect (MFSE) has been properly identi?ed and measured for potassium metal. This is the microwave frequency version of the radio frequency size e?ect but with the additional complication that the time of ?ight of the conduction electrons across the sample is comparable with the period of the microwaves. The electron orbits are identi?ed as being the symmetrical “type II” orbits, in the terminology of size e?ect studies. Unusually high quality spectra obtained during the early test work on the 35 GHz spectrometer enabled this study to be made. August 1987