Energy Dissipation during Diffusion at Metal Surfaces: Disentangling the Role of Phonons versus Electron-Hole Pairs
View / Open Files
Publication Date
2016-11-04Journal Title
Physical Review Letters
ISSN
0031-9007
Publisher
American Physical Society
Volume
117
Issue
19
Number
196001
Language
English
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Rittmeyer, S., Ward, D., Gütlein, P., Ellis, J., Allison, W., & Reuter, K. (2016). Energy Dissipation during Diffusion at Metal Surfaces: Disentangling the Role of Phonons versus Electron-Hole Pairs. Physical Review Letters, 117 (19. 196001)https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.196001
Abstract
Helium spin echo experiments combined with $\textit{ab initio}$ based Langevin molecular dynamics simulations are used to quantify the adsorbate-substrate coupling during the thermal diffusion of Na atoms on Cu(111). An analysis of trajectories within the local density friction approximation allows the contribution from electron-hole pair excitations to be separated from the total energy dissipation. Despite the minimal electronic friction coefficient of Na and the relatively small mass mismatch to Cu promoting efficient phononic dissipation, about (20±5)% of the total energy loss is attributable to electronic friction. The results suggest a significant role of electronic nonadiabaticity in the rapid thermalization generally relied upon in adiabatic diffusion theories.
Sponsorship
S. P. R. acknowledges the support of the Technische Universität München—Institute for Advanced Study, funded by the German Excellence Initiative and the European Union Seventh Framework Programme under Grant Agreement No. 291763.
Funder references
EPSRC (EP/E004962/1)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.196001
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/261653
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
Licence URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/