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Inelastic electron lifetimes in simple metals: Influence of spin–orbit coupling
Author(s) -
Kaltenborn Steffen,
Schneider Hans Christian
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
physica status solidi (rrl) – rapid research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.786
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1862-6270
pISSN - 1862-6254
DOI - 10.1002/pssr.201510101
Subject(s) - inelastic scattering , spin–orbit interaction , aluminium , coupling (piping) , chemistry , inelastic collision , atomic physics , electron , coulomb , spin (aerodynamics) , ab initio , scattering , molecular physics , condensed matter physics , physics , materials science , quantum mechanics , organic chemistry , metallurgy , thermodynamics
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)