Inelastic electron lifetimes in simple metals: Influence of spin-orbit coupling

Inelastic single‐particle lifetimes due to electron–electron Coulomb interaction are computed ab‐initio for aluminium, silver, gold and copper using an all‐electron density‐functional calculation and a parameter‐free evaluation of the dielectric function. The novel feature is the inclusion of spin–...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physica status solidi. PSS-RRL. Rapid research letters 2015-07, Vol.9 (7), p.436-439
Main Authors: Kaltenborn, Steffen, Schneider, Hans Christian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aluminum
Computation
Copper
density-functional theory
dielectric function
electronic lifetimes
Electronics
Electrons
Gold
Inclusions
Light metals
Mathematical analysis
Metals
Orbits
Silver
Spin-orbit interactions
Spinning
spin−orbit coupling
Wave functions
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Summary:Inelastic single‐particle lifetimes due to electron–electron Coulomb interaction are computed ab‐initio for aluminium, silver, gold and copper using an all‐electron density‐functional calculation and a parameter‐free evaluation of the dielectric function. The novel feature is the inclusion of spin– orbit coupling in the wave functions. We show that, even in light metals, spin–orbit interaction is important for the calculation of inelastic lifetimes because it influences the scattering matrix elements. The importance of spin mixing on the lifetimes in aluminium is examined. (© 2015 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH &Co. KGaA, Weinheim) This paper is concerned with the computation of electronic lifetimes in excited states in simple metals. These lifetimes have been measured by two‐photon photoemission, and the authors compare their results with measurements and earlier calculations. The new ingredient in the calculation is the inclusion of spin–orbit coupling in the electronic wave functions which changes the overlaps between initial and final states in Coulomb scattering processes. Kaltenborn and Schneider find that the ”mixing” of spins due to spin–orbit coupling has an effect on lifetimes even for light metals.
ISSN:1862-6254
1862-6270
DOI:10.1002/pssr.201510101