Scattering Rates of Quasiparticles

Researchers of our Department of Physical Chemistry (Maklar et al.) investigated in a combined experimental and theoretical study how a dynamical insulator-to-metal transition affects fundamental interactions, such as electron-electron and electron-phonon scattering. The research results are just published in the Physical Review Letter 128, 026406.

The international researcher team which comprizes also scientist from Stanford University, TU Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, utilizes optical excitation to transiently alter the energy gap of a charge-density-wave compound and observe a concurrent, highly unusual modulation of the relaxation rate of hot quasiparticles.

State-of-the-art calculations based on non-equilibrium Green’s functions provide a microscopic view onto the interplay of quasiparticle scattering and the transiently modified electronic band structure, highlighting the critical role of the phase space of electron-electron interaction. The results vividly demonstrate the possibility of controlling quasiparticle relaxation rates by transiently tuning the electronic band structure using light pulses.