Transient Energy and Heat Transport in Metals: Effect of the Discrete Character of the Lattice

A recently developed Shastry’s formalism for energy transport is used to analyze the temporal and spatial behaviors of the electron energy and heat transport in metals under delta function excitation at the surface. Comparison with Cattaneo’s model is performed. Both models show the transition between nonthermal (ballistic) and thermal (ballistic-diffusive) regimes. Furthermore, because the new model considers the discrete character of the lattice, it highlights some new phenomena, such as damped oscillations, in the energy transport both in time and in space. The energy relaxation of the conduction band electrons in metals is considered to be governed by the electron-phonon scattering, and the scattering time is taken to be averaged over the Fermi surface. Using the new formalism, one can quantify the transfer from nonthermal modes to thermal ones as energy propagates in the material and it is transformed into heat. While the thermal contribution shows a wave-front and an almost exponentially decaying behavior with time, the nonthermal part shows a wave-front and a damped oscillating behavior. Two superimposed oscillations are identified, a fast oscillation that is attributed to the nonthermal nature of energy transport at very short time scales and a slow oscillation that describes the nature of the transition from the nonthermal regime to the thermal regime of energy transport.