Correlation in the Al plasma excitation

The density-density correlation function in elementary excitations of the interacting electron gas is calculated from a simple model of the dynamic form factor. For the Al plasma excitation, a correlation length of is found. It is shown that the small correlation length does not contradict the surprisingly large coherence length of almost 10 nm recently found in inelastic interference experiments. The difference of nearly 2 orders of magnitude can be traced back to the long range Coulomb interaction between probe and target electrons.Received: 24 July 2003, Published online: 19 February 2004PACS: 34.80.Pa Coherence and correlation in electron scattering - 71.45.Gm Exchange, correlation, plasmons - 82.80.Pv Electron spectroscopy