Bismuth in a Strong Magnetic Field: a Gas-Liquid Type Phase Transition and Sound Attenuation

Abstract

The effects of the electron-hole correlation on the gas-liquid type phase transition and sound attenuation of electron-hole system in a strong magnetic field are investigated in a generalized random phase approximation. It is shown that the effects of the correlation amount to changing the effective interaction constant in a previous theory [D. Yoshioka: J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 44 (1978) 363]. Similar calculation of sound attenuation by Kuramoto [Z. Phys. B35 (1979) 233] is criticized to be inconsistent in the treatment of the Coulomb interaction.