Ballistic vs. diffusive transport in metals
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
2024-02-26 v1 Other Condensed Matter
Optics
Abstract
Using the Boltzmann transport model, we show that, somewhat unintuitively, ballistic transport of electrons in metals is weaker than diffusive transport. This happens because the femtosecond-scale collision rates of the non-thermal electrons makes their mean-free path negligible. Our predictions are correlated with various photoluminescence and nonlinear optics experimental examples both for Continuous Wave (CW) and pulsed illumination, and open the way to easy modelling of the non-thermal electron distributions in metal nanostructures of arbitrary complexity.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2402.15226,
title = {Ballistic vs. diffusive transport in metals},
author = {Yonatan Sivan and Ieng-Wai Un and Subhajit Sarkar},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2402.15226},
year = {2024}
}