No Arabic abstract
We present an alternative approach to the calculation of the lifetime of a single excited electron (hole) which interacts with the Fermi sea of electrons in a metal. The metal is modelled on the level of a Hamilton operator comprising a pertinent dispersion relation and scattering term. To determine the full relaxation dynamics we employ an adequate implementation of the time-convolutionless projection operator method (TCL). This yields an analytic expression for the decay rate which allows for an intuitive interpretation in terms of scattering events. It may furthermore be efficiently evaluated by means of a Monte-Carlo integration scheme. As an example we investigate aluminium using, just for simplicity, a jellium-type model. This way we obtain data which are directly comparable to results from a self-energy formalism. Our approach applies to arbitrary temperatures.
We apply the projection operator method (POM) to $phi^4$ theory and derive both quantum and semiclassical equations of motion for the soft modes. These equations have no time-convolution integral term, in sharp contrast with other well-known results obtained using the influence functional method (IFM) and the closed time path method (CTP). However, except for the fluctuation force field terms, these equations are similar to the corresponding equations obtained using IFM with the linear harmonic approximation, which was introduced to remove the time-convolution integral. The quantum equation of motion in POM can be regarded as a kind of quantum Langevin equation in which the fluctuation force field is given in terms of the operators of the hard modes. These operators are then replaced with c-numbers using a certain procedure to obtain a semiclassical Langevin equation. It is pointed out that there are significant differences between the fluctuation force fields introduced in this paper and those introduced in IFM. The arbitrariness of the definition of the fluctuation force field in IFM is also discussed.
The anomalous plasmon linewidth dispersion (PLD) measured in K by vom Felde, Sprosser-Prou, and Fink (Phys. Rev. B 40, 10181 (1989)), has been attributed to strong dynamical electron-electron correlations. On the basis of ab initio response calculations, and detailed comparison with experiment, we show that the PLD of K is, in fact, dominated by decay into particle-hole excitations involving empty states of d-symmetry. For Li, we shed new light on the physics of the PLD. Our all-electron results illustrate the importance of ab initio methods for the study of electronic excitations.
The spin relaxation time of electrons in GaAs and GaN are determined with a model that includes momentum scattering by phonons and ionized impurities, and spin scattering by the Elliot-Yafet, Dyakonov-Perel, and Bir-Aronov-Pikus mechanisms. Accurate bands generated using a long-range tight-binding Hamiltonian obtained from empirical pseudopotentials are used. The inferred temperature-dependence of the spin relaxation lifetime agrees well with measured values in GaAs. We further show that the spin lifetimes decrease rapidly with injected electrons energy and reach a local maximum at the longitudinal optical phonon energy. Our calculation predicts that electron spin lifetime in pure GaN is about 3 orders of magnitude longer than in GaAs at all temperatures, primarily as a result of the lower spin-orbit interaction and higher conduction band density of states.
We study the mirror-field interaction in several frameworks: when it is driven, when it is affected by an environment and when a two-level atom is introduced in the cavity. By using operator techniques we show how these problems may be either solved or how the Hamiltonians involved, via sets of unitary transformations, may be taken to known Hamiltonians for which there exist approximate solutions.
Recent years have seen a surge of interest in studies of hydrodynamic transport in electronic systems. We investigate the electron viscosity of metals and find a new component that is closely related to Coulomb drag. Using the linear response theory, viscosity, a transport coefficient for momentum, can be extracted from the retarded correlation function of the momentum flux, i.e., the stress tensor. There exists a previously overlooked contribution to the shear viscosity from the interacting part of the stress tensor which accounts for the momentum flow induced by interactions. This contribution, which we dub drag viscosity, is caused by the frictional drag force due to long-range interactions. It is therefore linked to Coulomb drag which also originates from the interaction induced drag force. Starting from the Kubo formula and using the Keldysh technique, we compute the drag viscosity of 2D and 3D metals along with the drag resistivity of double-layer 2D electronic systems. Both the drag resistivity and drag viscosity exhibit a crossover from quadratic-in-T behavior at low temperatures to a linear one at higher temperatures. Although the drag viscosity appears relatively small compared with the normal Drude component for the clean metals, it may dominate hydrodynamic transport in some systems, which are discussed in the conclusion.