Heat Generation in Spatially Confined Solids Through Electronic Light Scattering
Optics
2025-02-11 v3 Applied Physics
Abstract
In this Letter, we study the optical heating of spatially dispersive solids due to electronic light scattering (ELS), a phenomenon driven by indirect optical transitions. In this process, a spatial heterogeneity generates an optical near-field photon with expanded momentum, leading to electron-photon momentum matching, followed by thermalization of the electron system promoting optical heating. We experimentally demonstrate this effect by melting spatially confined semiconductor (Si) and metal (Au) under continuous-wave laser pump within the transparency window. ELS is a dominant physical process in media with strong spatial dispersion, underlying a variety of thermo-optical applications.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2412.05922,
title = {Heat Generation in Spatially Confined Solids Through Electronic Light Scattering},
author = {Sergey Kharintsev and Elina Battalova},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.05922},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
14 pages, 3 figures