Ultrafast quasiparticle relaxation dynamics in normal metals and heavy fermion materials

Abstract

We present a detailed theoretical study of the ultrafast quasiparticle relaxation dynamics observed in normal metals and heavy fermion materials with femtosecond time-resolved optical pump-probe spectroscopy. For normal metals, a nonthermal electron distribution gives rise to a temperature (T) independent electron-phonon relaxation time at low temperatures, in contrast to the T^{-3}-divergent behavior predicted by the two-temperature model. For heavy fermion compounds, we find that the blocking of electron-phonon scattering for heavy electrons within the density-of-states peak near the Fermi energy is crucial to explain the rapid increase of the electron-phonon relaxation time below the Kondo temperature. We propose the hypothesis that the slower Fermi velocity compared to the sound velocity provides a natural blocking mechanism due to energy and momentum conservation laws.

arXiv comment10 pages, 11 figures

References in corpus (5)

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• Single particle and collective excitations in the one-dimensional charge density wave solid K0.3MoO3 probed in real time by femtosecond spectroscopy
• Quasiparticle relaxation dynamics in heavy fermion compounds
• Slow crossover in YbXCu4 intermediate valence compounds
• Pseudogap Formation in the Symmetric Anderson Lattice Model

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• Ultrafast Optical Spectroscopy Evidence of Pseudogap and Electron-Phonon Coupling in an Iron-Based Superconductor KCa${}_2$Fe${}_4$As${}_4$F${}_2$
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• Excitation and Relaxation of Nonthermal Electron Energy Distributions in Metals with Application to Gold
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• Photoinduced Nonequilibrium Dynamics in Charge Ordered Materials
• Relaxation Dynamics of Photoinduced Changes in the Superfluid Weight of High-Tc Superconductors