The influence of the electron-phonon many-body renormalization effects on the electron states in normal metals is reviewed. The emphasis is on the electron-phonon mass enhancement parameter λ. The occurrence or absence of renormalization effects is discussed for different electronic properties. After a review of theoretical and experimental methods of obtaining information about λ, numerical values for this quantity are given for the elements. Other sections deal with alloys, compounds, disordered and amorphous metals, anisotropy in λ and variations in λ under pressure. Finally, brief comments are given on the electron-electron and electron-magnon renormalization of the electron mass.

Most metallic elements have a crystal structure that is either body-centered cubic (bcc), facecentered close packed, or hexagonal close packed. If the bcc lattice is the thermodynamically most stable structure, the close-packed structures usually are dynamically unstable, i.e., have elastic constants violating the Born stability conditions or, more generally, have phonons with imaginary frequencies. Conversely, the bcc lattice tends to be dynamically unstable if the equilibrium structure is close packed. This striking regularity essentially went unnoticed until ab initio total-energy calculations in the 1990s became accurate enough to model dynamical properties of solids in hypothetical lattice structures. After a review of stability criteria, thermodynamic functions in the vicinity of an instability, Bain paths, and how instabilities may arise or disappear when pressure, temperature, and/or chemical composition is varied are discussed. The role of dynamical instabilities in the ideal strength of solids and in metallurgical phase diagrams is then considered, and comments are made on amorphization, melting, and low-dimensional systems. The review concludes with extensive references to theoretical work on the stability properties of metallic elements.

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We have revealed, and resolved, an apparent inability of density functional theory, within the local density and generalized gradient approximations, to describe vacancies in Al accurately and consistently. The shortcoming is due to electron correlation effects near electronic edges and we show how to correct for them. We find that the divacancy in Al is energetically unstable and we show that anharmonic atomic vibrations explain the non-Arrhenius temperature dependence of the vacancy concentration.

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In experiments where intense radiation penetrates into the bulk of a solid and causes ultrafast (femtosecond) heating, the superheated crystalline solid melts from within at a temperature above the equilibrium melting temperature. But what happens on the atomic scale as a solid loses crystalline order remains an open question. Molecular dynamics modelling allows the position of every atom to be traced at each instant, as a crystal transforms from solid to liquid. Here we use such detailed atomistic simulations, relevant for aluminium, to show that the thermal fluctuation initiating melting is an aggregate typically with 6-7 interstitials and 3-4 vacancies. This mechanism differs from those that have traditionally been proposed, which generally involve many more atoms at the initial melting stage.