Theory of out-of-equilibrium electron and phonon dynamics in metals after ultrafast laser excitation

Abstract

The out-of-equilibrium dynamics of electrons and phonons upon laser excitation are often described by the two-temperature model, which assumes that both subsystems are separately in thermal equilibrium. However, recent experiments show that this description is not sufficient to describe the out-of-equilibrium dynamics on ultrashort timescales. Here, we extend and apply a parameter-free microscopic out-of-equilibrium model to describe the ultrafast laser-induced system dynamics of archetypical metallic systems such as gold, aluminum, iron, nickel, and cobalt. We report strong deviations from the two-temperature model on the picosecond timescale for all the materials studied, even for those where the assumption of separate thermal equilibriums seemed less restrictive, like in gold. Furthermore, we demonstrate the importance of the phonon-mode dependent electron-phonon coupling for the relaxation process and reveal the significance of this channel in the lattice equilibration through an indirect coupling between phonons via the electronic system.

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• Concepts and use cases for picosecond ultrasonics with x-rays
• Intrinsic energy flow in laser-excited 3$d$ ferromagnets
• Ultrafast Demagnetization through Femtosecond Generation of Non-thermal Magnons
• Energy relaxation and electron-phonon coupling in laser-excited metals
• Ultrafast magnetization reversal in ferromagnetic spin-valves: an s-d model perspective
• Heat-conserving three-temperature model for ultrafast demagnetization of 3d ferromagnets
• Excitation and Relaxation of Nonthermal Electron Energy Distributions in Metals with Application to Gold
• Relaxation timescales and electron-phonon coupling in optically-pumped YBa${}_2$Cu${}_3$O${}_{6+x}$ revealed by time-resolved Raman scattering
• Phonon-induced renormalization of exchange interactions in metallic two-dimensional magnets
• Detection of Mechanical Deformation Induced by Ultrafast Laser Irradiation upon a Metallic Cantilever
• Ultrafast lattice dynamics and electron-phonon coupling in platinum extracted with a global fitting approach for time-resolved polycrystalline diffraction data