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arXiv:2607.17265

First-principles electron-phonon scattering in real-time TDDFT

Zhengwei Nie, Subhojit Pal, Marti Lüders, Alexander Buccheri, Hannes Hübener, Shunsuke A. Sato, Umberto De Giovannini

Published Jul 19, 2026• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Real-time time-dependent density functional theory provides a first-principles description of coherent electron dynamics in laser-driven solids, but its unitary formulation cannot capture the irreversible scattering, relaxation, and decoherence processes that drive excited carriers toward equilibrium. Here, we develop a dissipative rt-TDDFT framework in which first-principles electron-phonon interactions enter the evolution of the reduced one-body density matrix through self-energy-derived collision integrals within the Born-Markov approximation. The approach retains the quantum-coherent real-time propagation of the electronic system while introducing phonon-mediated transitions that redistribute carriers in energy and crystal momentum, thereby incorporating the microscopic momentum-transfer processes responsible for relaxation in real materials. The resulting framework provides a practical first-principles route to simulate relaxation, decoherence, and time-resolved spectroscopic signatures in realistic crystalline materials.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2607.17265

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Real-time time-dependent density functional theory provides a first-principles description of coherent electron dynamics in laser-driven solids, but its unitary formulation cannot capture the irreversible scattering, relaxation, and decoherence processes that drive excited carriers toward equilibrium. Here, we develop a dissipative rt-TDDFT framework in which first-principles electron-phonon interactions enter the evolution of the reduced one-body density matrix through self-energy-derived collision integrals within the Born-Markov approximation. The approach retains the quantum-coherent real-time propagation of the electronic system while introducing phonon-mediated transitions that redistribute carriers in energy and crystal momentum, thereby incorporating the microscopic momentum-transfer processes responsible for relaxation in real materials. The resulting framework provides a practical first-principles route to simulate relaxation, decoherence, and time-resolved spectroscopic signatures in realistic crystalline materials.
Time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) has developed into an efficient and versatile description of realistic extended many-electron systems driven, e.g., by strong laser fields. It accounts for the fully coherent evolution of the NNN-electron wave packet representing an isolated system. Decoherence as encountered in open systems by coupling to external degrees of freedom of a bath of, e.g., phonons or defects, is, by construction, absent. In this work we present an open-quantum system (OQS) extension of TDDFT accounting for dephasing and decoherence due to electron-phonon or defect scattering. We test the OQS-TDDFT for high-harmonic generation and irreversible changes of dielectric properties in solids driven by strong ir and mid-ir laser pulses. We present applications to diamond as a prototypical wide band-gap dielectric. For weak pulses we demonstrate the equivalence of OQS-TDDFT with the solution of the Bloch equations for the reduced one-particle density matrix while differences appear at high excitation densities. Our study highlights the importance of the accurate representation of the band structure in simulations of the harmonic spectrum. Narrow avoided crossings within the Brillouin zone can give rise to Bloch-type oscillations.
Ultrafast electronic dynamics in solids lies at the core of modern condensed matter and materials physics. To build up a practical \textit{ab initio} method for studying solids under photoexcitation, we develop momentum-resolved real-time time dependent density functional theory (rt-TDDFT) algorithm using numerical atomic basis, together with the implementation of both length and vector gauge of electromagnetic field. When applied to simulate elementary excitations in graphene, different excitation modes, only distinguishable in momentum space, are observed. The momentum-resolved rt-TDDFT is important and computationally efficient for the study of ultrafast dynamics in extended systems.
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Classical molecular dynamics (MD) provides a powerful and widely used approach to determining thermodynamic properties by integrating the classical equations of motion of a system of atoms. Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory (TDDFT) provides a powerful and increasingly useful approach to integrating the quantum equations of motion for a system of electrons. TDDFT efficiently captures the unitary evolution of a many-electron state by mapping the system into a fictitious non-interacting system. In analogy to MD, one could imagine obtaining the thermodynamic properties of an electronic system from a TDDFT simulation in which the electrons are excited from their ground state by a time-dependent potential and then allowed to evolve freely in time while statistical data are captured from periodic snapshots of the system. For a variety of systems (e.g., many metals), the electrons reach an effective state of internal equilibrium due to electron-electron interactions on a time scale that is short compared to electron-phonon equilibration. During the initial time-evolution of such systems following electronic excitation, electron-phonon interactions should be negligible, and therefore, TDDFT should successfully capture the internal thermalization of the electrons. However, it is unclear how TDDFT represents the resulting thermal state. In particular, the thermal state is usually represented in quantum statistical mechanics as a mixed state, while the occupations of the TDDFT wavefunctions are fixed by the initial state in TDDFT. We work to address this puzzle by (A) reformulating quantum statistical mechanics so that thermodynamic expectations can be obtained as an unweighted average over a set of many-body pure states and (B) constructing a family of non-interacting (single determinant) TDDFT states that approximate the required many-body states for the canonical ensemble.
The interaction of electrons with quantized phonons and photons underlies the ultrafast dynamics of systems ranging from molecules to solids, and it gives rise to a plethora of physical phenomena experimentally accessible using time-resolved techniques. Green's function methods offer an invaluable interpretation tool since scattering mechanisms of growing complexity can be selectively incorporated in the theory. Currently, however, real-time Green's function simulations are either prohibitively expensive due to the cubic scaling with the propagation time or do neglect the feedback of electrons on the bosons, thus violating energy conservation. We put forward a computationally efficient Green's function scheme which overcomes both limitations. The numerical effort scales linearly with the propagation time while the simultaneous dressing of electrons and bosons guarantees the fulfillment of all fundamental conservation laws. We present a real-time study of the phonon-driven relaxation dynamics in an optically excited narrow band-gap insulator, highlighting the nonthermal behavior of the phononic degrees of freedom. Our formulation paves the way to first-principles simulations of electron-boson systems with unprecedented long propagation times.
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