Infrared Reflection from Metals

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Abstract
A theory is presented to account for the deviations of the infrared reflectivity of simple metals from that predicted by Drude's theory. It is argued that at room temperatures the dominant mechanism of absorption of infrared radiation is the scattering of an almost-free-electron Fermi gas from randomly distributed fluctuations of ionic charges. Using a model of an electron-ion plasma, the current moment equation is solved for all frequencies, and the reflectivity and other optical constants are calculated from it. The results show deviations, due to the electron-ion correlations, from the free-electron model, and they seem to indicate a trend in agreement with recent experiments.