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Title: General Principles for the Nonequilibrium Relaxation of Populations in Quantum Materials

Abstract

We examine the problem of how excited populations of electrons relax after they have been excited by a pump. We include three of the most important relaxation processes: (i) impurity scattering, (ii) Coulomb scattering, and (iii) electron-phonon scattering. The relaxation of an excited population of electrons is one of the most fundamental processes measured in pump-probe experiments, but its interpretation remains under debate. We show how several common assumptions about nonequilibrium relaxation that are pervasive in the field may not hold under quite general conditions. The analysis shows that nonequilibrium relaxation is more complex than previously thought, but it yields to recently developed theoretical methods in nonequilibrium theory. Here in this work, we show how one can use many-body theory to properly interpret and analyze these complex systems. We focus much of the discussion on implications of these results for experiment.

Authors:
; ;
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Georgetown Univ., Washington, DC (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division
OSTI Identifier:
1477524
Alternate Identifier(s):
OSTI ID: 1483396
Grant/Contract Number:  
FG02-08ER46542; AC02-05CH11231
Resource Type:
Journal Article: Published Article
Journal Name:
Physical Review. X
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Name: Physical Review. X Journal Volume: 8 Journal Issue: 4; Journal ID: ISSN 2160-3308
Publisher:
American Physical Society
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS

Citation Formats

Kemper, A. F., Abdurazakov, O., and Freericks, J. K. General Principles for the Nonequilibrium Relaxation of Populations in Quantum Materials. United States: N. p., 2018. Web. doi:10.1103/PhysRevX.8.041009.
Kemper, A. F., Abdurazakov, O., & Freericks, J. K. General Principles for the Nonequilibrium Relaxation of Populations in Quantum Materials. United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.8.041009
Kemper, A. F., Abdurazakov, O., and Freericks, J. K. 2018. "General Principles for the Nonequilibrium Relaxation of Populations in Quantum Materials". United States. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.8.041009.
@article{osti_1477524,
title = {General Principles for the Nonequilibrium Relaxation of Populations in Quantum Materials},
author = {Kemper, A. F. and Abdurazakov, O. and Freericks, J. K.},
abstractNote = {We examine the problem of how excited populations of electrons relax after they have been excited by a pump. We include three of the most important relaxation processes: (i) impurity scattering, (ii) Coulomb scattering, and (iii) electron-phonon scattering. The relaxation of an excited population of electrons is one of the most fundamental processes measured in pump-probe experiments, but its interpretation remains under debate. We show how several common assumptions about nonequilibrium relaxation that are pervasive in the field may not hold under quite general conditions. The analysis shows that nonequilibrium relaxation is more complex than previously thought, but it yields to recently developed theoretical methods in nonequilibrium theory. Here in this work, we show how one can use many-body theory to properly interpret and analyze these complex systems. We focus much of the discussion on implications of these results for experiment.},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevX.8.041009},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1477524}, journal = {Physical Review. X},
issn = {2160-3308},
number = 4,
volume = 8,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Oct 15 00:00:00 EDT 2018},
month = {Mon Oct 15 00:00:00 EDT 2018}
}

Journal Article:
Free Publicly Available Full Text
Publisher's Version of Record at https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.8.041009

Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 25 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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