Summary: IOP PUBLISHING JOURNAL OF PHYSICS: CONDENSED MATTER
J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 21 (2009) 485503 (6pp) doi:10.1088/0953-8984/21/48/485503
Ultrafast equilibration of excited electrons
in dynamical simulations
Zhibin Lin1
and Roland E Allen
Department of Physics, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA
E-mail: allen@tamu.edu
Received 30 July 2009, in final form 18 October 2009
Published 6 November 2009
Online at stacks.iop.org/JPhysCM/21/485503
Abstract
In our density-functional-based simulations of materials responding to femtosecond-scale laser
pulses, we have observed a potentially useful phenomenon: the excited electrons automatically
equilibrate to a Fermi­Dirac distribution within 100 fs, solely because of their coupling to the
nuclear motion, even though the resulting electronic temperature is one to two orders of
magnitude higher than the kinetic temperature defined by the nuclear motion. Microscopic
simulations like these can then provide the separate electronic and kinetic temperatures,
chemical potentials, pressures, and nonhydrostatic stresses as input for studies on larger lengths
and timescales.

Source: Allen, Roland E. - Department of Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University

Collections: Physics