Ultrafast dynamics of electrons and phonons: from the two-temperature model to the time-dependent Boltzmann equation

Abstract

The advent of pump-probe spectroscopy techniques paved the way to the exploration of the ultrafast dynamics of electrons and phonons in crystalline solids. Following photo-absorption of a pump pulse and the initial electronic thermalization, the dynamics of electronic and vibrational degrees of freedom is dominated by electron-phonon and phonon-phonon scattering processes.The two-temperature model (TTM) and its generalizations -- as, e.g., the non-thermal lattice model (NLM) -- provide valuable tools to describe these phenomena and the ensuing coupled electron-phonon dynamics over timescales ranging between few hundreds of femtoseconds and tens of picoseconds. While more sophisticated theoretical approaches are nowadays available, the conceptual and computational simplicity of the TTM makes it the method of choice to model thermalization processes in pump-probe spectroscopy, and it keeps being widely applied in both experimental and theoretical studies. In the domain of ab-initio methods, the time-dependent Boltzmann equation (TDBE) ameliorates many of the shortcomings of the TTM and it enables a realistic and parameter-free description of ultrafast phenomena with full momentum resolution. After a pedagogical introduction to the TTM and TDBE, in this manuscript we review their application to the description of ultrafast process in solid-state physics and materials science as well as their theoretical foundation.

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• Laser-induced plasma formation and cavitation in water: from nanoeffects to extreme states of matter
• Momentum-Resolved Signatures of Carrier Screening Effects on Electron-Phonon Coupling in MoS${}_2$
• Tunable ultrafast thermionic emission from femtosecond-laser hot spot on a metal surface: role of laser polarization and angle of incidence
• Vibrational dynamics of CO on Pd(111) in and out of thermal equilibrium
• Photonic Interactions with Semiconducting Barrier Discharges
• Anomalous quantum oscillations from boson-mediated interband scattering
• Energy flow during relaxation in an electron-phonon system with multiple modes: A nonequilibrium Green's function study
• Relaxation of photo-excited hot carriers beyond multi-temperature models: General theory description verified by experiments on Pb/Si(111)
• Observation of a phonon bottleneck effect on the thermal depopulation from a photoexcited shallow defect in silicon
• Excitonic effects in the photocarriers dynamics of two-dimensional materials
• Coherent Phonon-Driven Band Renormalizations in 1T${}^{\prime }$-MoTe${}_2$
• Asymmetry and coverage dependence in two-pulse correlation measurements of CO photodesorption from Pd(111): Insights from theory
• Charge carrier relaxation dynamics in the one-dimensional Kondo lattice model
• Machine learning model for efficient nonthermal tuning of the charge density wave in monolayer NbSe${}_2$