Ultrafast electron dynamics at metal interfaces: intraband relaxation of image state electrons as friction.
Two-photon photoemission of image potential states above monolayers of p-xylene/Ag(111) shows that electrons with different momenta have very different rise and decay rates as a function of parallel momentum. The dynamics are due to energy and momentum loss (intraband relaxation), which we model as a stochastic process isomorphic to the overdamped motion of a harmonic oscillator. The method extracts a friction coefficient from the data which can be explained by electron-electron scattering in a formalism based on the Lindhard dielectric function. One-electron excitations (interband transistions) dominate the dissipation mechanism, with a smaller contribution from collective electronic excitations (plasmons).
Garrett-Roe
Sean
S
Chemistry Department, University of California-Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
Shipman
Steven T
ST
Szymanski
Paul
P
Strader
Matthew L
ML
Yang
Aram
A
Harris
Charles B
CB