Bloch wave

A Bloch wave (also called Bloch state or Bloch function or Bloch wave function), named after Swiss physicist Felix Bloch, is a type of wavefunction for a particle in a periodically-repeating environment, most commonly an electron in a crystal. A wavefunction ψ is a Bloch wave if it has the form:

where r is position, ψ is the Bloch wave, u is a periodic function with the same periodicity as the crystal, k is a vector of real numbers called the crystal wave vector, e is Euler's number, and i is the imaginary unit. In other words, if you multiply a plane wave by a periodic function, you get a Bloch wave.