Projection operator approach to lifetimes of electrons in metals

Abstract

We present an alternative approach to the calculation of the lifetime of a single excited electron (hole) which interacts with the Fermi sea of electrons in a metal. The metal is modeled on the level of a Hamilton operator comprising a pertinent dispersion relation and scattering term. To determine the full relaxation dynamics we employ an adequate implementation of the time-convolutionless projection operator method. This yields an analytic expression for the decay rate which allows for an intuitive interpretation in terms of scattering events. It may furthermore be efficiently evaluated by means of a Monte Carlo integration scheme. As an example we investigate aluminum using, just for simplicity, a jellium-type model. This way we obtain data which are directly comparable to results from a self-energy formalism. Our approach applies to arbitrary temperatures.