Implementation of the electronic non-equilibrium in the two-temperature model

TL;DR

This paper introduces an extended two-temperature model (eTTM) that better captures electronic non-equilibrium effects in metals after ultrashort laser pulses, improving upon previous models and aligning well with kinetic descriptions.

Contribution

The paper develops and discusses improvements to the eTTM, providing a more accurate and computationally efficient way to model electronic non-equilibrium in laser-excited metals.

Findings

eTTM shows delayed electronic temperature increase compared to TTM.

Good agreement between eTTM and Boltzmann kinetic results.

eTTM effectively models high-energy electron dynamics in photo-electron spectroscopy.

Abstract

We investigate a temperature-based model, called extended two-temperature model (eTTM), that describes the electronic non-equilibrium and its effect on energy dissipation in metals after ultrashort laser excitation. We derive and discuss improvements in comparison to published versions of this model [E. Carpene, Phys. Rev. B 2006, 74, 024301; G. Tsibidis, Appl. Phys. A 2018, 124, 311]. The comparison of the results of the eTTM with results of the well-known two-temperature model (TTM) shows a delayed increase of the electronic temperature when being calculated with the eTTM. We find a good agreement in the non-equilibrium energy distribution after absorption of photons with results from a kinetic description using a Boltzmann collision term. The model provides a convenient tool for fast calculation of features of the non-equilibrium electrons. As an example we inspect the dynamics of high-energy electrons observable in photo-electron spectroscopy and demonstrate the advantage of the eTTM over the conventional two-temperature model.