Theory of Out-of-Equilibrium Ultrafast Relaxation Dynamics in Metals

Abstract

Ultrafast laser excitation of a metal causes correlated, highly nonequilibrium dynamics of electronic and ionic degrees of freedom, which are however only poorly captured by the widely-used two-temperature model. Here we develop an out-of-equilibrium theory that captures the full dynamic evolution of the electronic and phononic populations and provides a microscopic description of the transfer of energy delivered optically into electrons to the lattice. All essential nonequilibrium energy processes, such as electron-phonon and phonon-phonon interactions are taken into account. Moreover, as all required quantities are obtained from first-principles calculations, the model gives an exact description of the relaxation dynamics without the need for fitted parameters. We apply the model to FePt and show that the detailed relaxation is out-of-equilibrium for picoseconds.

6 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Distribution of phonon lifetime in Brillouin zone
• All-optical control of ferromagnetic thin films and nanostructures
• Theory of Thermal Relaxation of Electrons in Semiconductors
• Interaction quench in the Holstein model: Thermalization crossover from electron- to phonon-dominated relaxation
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• Phonon-assisted processes in the ultraviolet transient optical response of graphene
• Ab initio analysis for initial process of Joule heating in semiconductors
• Modeling the relaxation processes of photoexcited solids: A short review