Theory of photoluminescence by metallic structures

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive theoretical framework to understand and quantify photoluminescence in metals, addressing a phenomenon that is experimentally observed but not fully understood.

Contribution

It introduces a general formula linking emitted power to electronic transitions and derives a simplified expression for intraband recombination, extending Kirchhoff's law.

Findings

The theory quantitatively matches experimental data.

Derived a closed-form expression for intraband photoluminescence.

Provides insights into the mechanisms of metal light emission.

Abstract

Light emission by metals at room temperature is quenched by fast relaxation processes. Nevertheless, Mooradian reported in 1969 the observation of photoluminescence by metals pumped by a laser. Strikingly, while it is currently at the heart of many promising applications, this phenomenon is still poorly understood. In this work, we report a theory which reproduces quantitatively previously published experimental data. We first provide a general formula that relates the emitted power for a frequency, direction and polarization state to a sum over all transitions involving matrix elements, electronic distribution of all bands and the Green tensor. We then consider the case of intraband recombination and derive a closed-form expression of the emitted power depending only on macroscopic quantities. This formula, which is a generalization of Kirchhoff's law, answers many of the open questions related to intraband photoluminescence.