Anharmonic decay of phonons in semiconductors from first-principles calculations

TL;DR

This paper uses first-principles calculations to analyze anharmonic phonon decay in semiconductors, providing insights into phonon lifetimes and decay channels with results aligning well with experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a first-principles method to calculate anharmonic phonon decay and compares decay channels with experimental observations.

Findings

Good agreement with experimental phonon lifetime data

Identification of dominant two-phonon decay channels

Correlation of decay channels with density of final states

Abstract

The anharmonic contribution to phonon lifetime and its temperature dependence is calculated from first principle in C, Si and Ge using third-order density-functional perturbation theory. Good agreement with available experimental data is obtained. Different competing two-phonon decay channels are compared and correlated with the density of final states.