Electron scattering at a center with phonon degrees of freedom

Wilfried Schäfer, Martin Wegener

Christoph Brockt, Eric Jeckelmann

We investigate the scattering of an electron by phonons in a small structure between two one-dimensional tight-binding leads. This model mimics the quantum electron transport through atomic wires or molecular junctions coupled to metallic leads. The electron-phonon-coupled structure is represented by the Holstein model. We observe permanent energy transfer from the electron to the phonon system (dissipation), transient self-trapping of the electron in the electron-phonon-coupled structure (due to polaron formation and multiple reflections at the structure edges), and transmission resonances that depend strongly on the strength of the electron-phonon coupling and the adiabaticity ratio. A recently developed TEBD algorithm, optimized for bosonic degrees of freedom, is used to simulate the quantum dynamics of a wave packet launched against the electron-phonon-coupled structure. Exact results are calculated for a single electron-phonon site using scattering theory and analytical approximations are obtained for limiting cases.

J. Zieliński

Kaoru Iwano

An ultrafast growth dynamics of a quantum domain after visible or near-infrared photoexcitation is discussed in a one-dimensional system that resides on the first-order phase boundary. Special emphasis is placed on the effects of phonon excitations that are expected to occur in the course of the dynamics. To treat such effects as transparently as possible, we incorporate phonon degrees of freedom into a domain model that consists of two fundamental domain degrees of freedom, namely the spatial extension and the center of gravity. An exact time-evolution calculation within a restricted Hilbert space that almost converges the results indicates that the phonon excitations provide appreciable incoherence to the domain growth especially via overall distributions of the domain center-of-gravity momentum over its nonzero values.

Haoyu Guo, Debanjan Chowdhury

Metals at the brink of electronic quantum phase transitions display high-temperature superconductivity, competing orders, and unconventional charge transport, revealing strong departures from conventional Fermi liquid behavior. Investigation of these fascinating intertwined phenomena has been at the center of research across a variety of correlated materials over the past many decades. A ubiquitous experimental observation is the emergence of a universal timescale that governs electrical transport and momentum relaxation. In this Letter, we analyze an equally important theoretical question of how the energy contained in the electronic degrees of freedom near a quantum phase transition relaxes to the environment via their coupling to acoustic phonons. Assuming that the bottleneck for energy dissipation is controlled by the coupling between electronic degrees of freedom and acoustic phonons, we present a universal theory of the temperature dependence of the energy relaxation rate in a marginal Fermi liquid. We find that the energy relaxation rate exhibits a complex set of temperature-dependent crossovers controlled by emergent energy scales in the problem. We place these results in the context of recent measurements of the energy relaxation rate via nonlinear optical spectroscopy in the normal state of hole-doped cuprates.

Eric Jeckelmann, Chunli Zhang, Steven R. White