Inelastic electron lifetimes in simple metals: Influence of spin–orbit coupling |
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| Authors: | Steffen Kaltenborn Hans Christian Schneider |
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| Affiliation: | Physics Department and Research Center OPTIMAS, Kaiserslautern, Germany |
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| Abstract: | 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) |
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| Keywords: | metals electronic lifetimes spin− orbit coupling dielectric function density‐functional theory |
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