Hydrodynamic approach to electronic transport in graphene: energy relaxation

TL;DR

This paper develops a hydrodynamic framework for understanding energy relaxation in graphene, emphasizing the role of supercollisions in quasiparticle recombination and heat transfer at high temperatures.

Contribution

It derives decay terms for energy conservation violations due to supercollisions within the hydrodynamic approach, highlighting their significance at high temperatures.

Findings

Supercollisions dominate energy relaxation in graphene at high temperatures.

Decay terms for energy conservation violations are derived within hydrodynamics.

Supercollisions significantly contribute to heat transfer in viscous hydrodynamics.

Abstract

In nearly compensated graphene, disorder-assisted electron-phonon scattering or "supercollisions" are responsible for both quasiparticle recombination and energy relaxation. Within the hydrodynamic approach, these processes contribute weak decay terms to the continuity equations at local equilibrium, i.e., at the level of "ideal" hydrodynamics. Here we report the derivation of the decay term due to weak violation of energy conservation. Such terms have to be considered on equal footing with the well-known recombination terms due to nonconservation of the number of particles in each band. At high enough temperatures in the "hydrodynamic regime" supercollisions dominate both types of the interaction). We also discuss the contribution of supercollisions to the heat transfer equation (generalizing the continuity equation for the energy density in viscous hydrodynamics).