First principles calculation of the electronic contribution to the thermal conductivity of potassium

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Abstract
Recently Shukla and Taylor (1976) calculated the phonon-limited electrical resistivity of potassium using a fundamental description of the lattice dynamics and electron-phonon coupling and obtained very good agreement with experiment. Precisely the same description has been used to calculate the electronic thermal conductivity of potassium from 1 to 330K. Very satisfactory agreement with experiment is obtained when the correct energy dependence of the electron distribution function is incorporated in the calculation. The effect of impurities on the low temperature thermal resistivity is investigated assuming that the total scattering rate for mixed phonon and impurity scattering is simply the sum of the scattering rates for the two acting separately.