Thermalization in simple metals: The role of electron-phonon and phonon-phonon scatterings

TL;DR

This paper investigates how electrons and phonons in simple metals thermalize after laser excitation, highlighting the complex interplay of scattering mechanisms and contrasting with traditional two-temperature models.

Contribution

It provides a detailed numerical analysis of electron-phonon and phonon-phonon scatterings, revealing a new understanding of thermalization dynamics beyond the two-temperature model.

Findings

Energy transfer from electrons to phonons occurs rapidly via e-ph scattering.

Overshoot of phonon energy indicates a crossover from nonequilibrium to equilibrium.

Relaxation dynamics differ significantly from the two-temperature model.

Abstract

We study the electron and phonon thermalization in simple metals excited by a laser pulse. The thermalization is investigated numerically by solving the Boltzmann transport equation taking into account all the relevant scattering mechanism: the electron-electron, electron-phonon (e-ph), phonon-electron (ph-e), and phonon-phonon (ph-ph) scatterings. In the initial stage of the relaxation, most of the excitation energy is transferred from the electrons to phonons through the e-ph scattering. This creates hot high-frequency phonons due to the ph-e scatterings, followed by an energy redistribution between phonon subsystems through the ph-ph scatterings. This yields an overshoot of the total longitudinal-acoustic phonon energy at a time, across which a crossover occurs from a nonequilibrium state, where the e-ph and ph-e scatterings frequently occur, to a state, where the ph-ph scattering occurs to reach a thermal equilibrium. This picture is quite different from the scenario of the well-known two-temperature model (2TM). The behavior of the relaxation dynamics is compared with those calculated by several models, including the 2TM, the four-temperature model, and nonequilibrium electron or phonon models. The relationship between the relaxation time and the initial distribution function is also discussed.