What is the meaning of Brillouin zone?

What is the meaning of Brillouin zone?

A Brillouin zone is a particular choice of the unit cell of the reciprocal lattice. It is defined as the Wigner-Seitz cell (also called Dirichlet or Voronoi domain of influence) of the reciprocal lattice. Alternatively, it is defined as the set of points closer to the origin than to any other reciprocal lattice point.

What are Brillouin zones sketch first and second Brillouin zones of a 2d square lattice?

The first three Brillouin zones of a two-dimensional centered rectangular lattice. The first zone is the set of points closer to the origin than any other reciprocal lattice point. The second zone is constituted of the set of points that one reaches by crossing only one zone boundary.

What are Brillouin zones explain 1 D 2 D and 3 D Brillouin zones?

The first zone is the set of points closer to the origin than any other reciprocal lattice point. The second zone is constituted of the set of points that one reaches by crossing only one zone boundary. The third zone is the set of points that one reaches by crossing a minimum of two zone boundaries.

Which is the first Brillouin zone in the lattice?

The first Brillouin zone is the locus of points in reciprocal space that are closer to the origin of the reciprocal lattice than they are to any other reciprocal lattice points (see the derivation of the Wigner-Seitz cell ). Another definition is as the set of points in k -space that can be reached from the origin without crossing any Bragg plane.

How to define a 2D Brillouin zone in 3D?

So after looking at this, we can get a short definition of how to construct 2D Brillouin zones. So n-th Brillouin zone can be defined as the area, or volume if we look in 3D, in reciprocal space that can be reached from the origin by crossing exactly n minus 1 Bragg planes.

How is reciprocal space and Brillouin zone related?

The reciprocal lattice basis vectors a* and b* are respectively perpendicular to a and b, and obviously make a 90˚ angle to each other. The reciprocal lattice points generated by these basis vectors is also square and is in alignment with the direct lattice, the first Brillouin zone is just a square.

Which is the closest Bragg line to the Brillouin zone?

A Bragg plane, or in this case, a Bragg line, is a Bragg line which perpendicularly bisects a reciprocal lattice vector– a vector which connects two lattice points. And the closest Bragg planes are essentially crossing the Brillouin zone. Now, we can show the Bragg planes with the closest neighbors, with this being our original lattice point.