Matching Conditions in Effective-Mass Theory

Abstract

It has been shown that the traditional matching of wavefunctions between regions of different effective mass (matching {\psi} and (1/m*)\partial{\psi}/\partialx) is not correct, but that one should match (1/\surdm*){\psi} and (1/\surdm*)\partial{\psi}/\partialx. It has not been clear how serious is the error in using the traditional formula. We apply the two sets of conditions to a simple, but rather general, example and find that the traditional matching is not even qualitatively correct.