arXiv subjects

Shree Ram Acharya

Publications and source records attributed to Shree Ram Acharya.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2021

Electron Thermalization and Relaxation in Laser-Heated Nickel by Few-Femtosecond Core-Level Transient Absorption Spectroscopy

Direct measurements of photoexcited carrier dynamics in nickel are made using few-femtosecond extreme ultraviolet (XUV) transient absorption spectroscopy at the nickel M$_{2,3}$ edge. It is observed that the core-level absorption lineshape of photoexcited nickel can be described by a Gaussian broadening ($σ$) and a red shift ($ω_{s}$) of the ground state absorption spectrum. Theory predicts, and the experimental results verify that after initial rapid carrier thermalization, the electron temperature increase ($ΔT$) is linearly proportional to the Gaussian broadening factor $σ$, providing quantitative real-time tracking of the relaxation of the electron temperature. Measurements reveal an electron cooling time for 50 nm thick polycrystalline nickel films of 640$\pm$80 fs. With hot thermalized carriers, the spectral red shift exhibits a power-law relationship with the change in electron temperature of $ω_{s}\proptoΔT^{1.5}$. Rapid electron thermalization via carrier-carrier scattering accompanies and follows the nominal 4 fs photoexcitation pulse until the carriers reach a quasi-thermal equilibrium. Entwined with a <6 fs instrument response function, carrier thermalization times ranging from 34 fs to 13 fs are estimated from experimental data acquired at different pump fluences and it is observed that the electron thermalization time decreases with increasing pump fluence. The study provides an initial example of measuring electron temperature and thermalization in metals in real time with XUV light, and it lays a foundation for further investigation of photoinduced phase transitions and carrier transport in metals with core-level absorption spectroscopy.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2019

Ultrafast demagnetization dynamics in Ni: role of electron correlations

Experimental observations of the ultrafast (less than 50 fs) demagnetization of Ni have so far defied theoretical explanations particularly since its spin-flipping time is much less than that resulting from spin-orbit and electron-lattice interactions. Through the application of an approach that benefits from spin-flip time-dependent density-functional theory and dynamical mean-field theory, we show that proper inclusion of electron correlations and memory (time-dependence of electron-electron interaction) effects leads to demagnetization at the femtosecond scale, in good agreement with experimental observations. Furthermore, our calculations reveal that this ultrafast demagnetization results mainly from spin-flip transitions from occupied to unoccupied orbitals implying a dynamical reduction of exchange splitting. These conclusions are found to be valid for a wide range of laser pulse amplitudes. They also pave the way for ab initio investigations of ultrafast charge and spin dynamics in a variety of quantum materials in which electron correlations may play a definitive role.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2019

Sub-monolayer structures of Ag overlayers on Ge(111): experimental observations and first-principles study

We present a joint experimental and theoretical determination of structures of Ag adatoms on the Ge(111) surface using low energy electron diffraction, low energy electron microscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy, and density functional theory-based calculations, as functions of coverages and temperature. Experimentally for clean Ge(111), c(2X8) and (2X1) phases occur, while Ag overlayers cause (4X4), (V3XV3)R30 and (3X1) surface structural phases. The dependence of the growth behavior of these different phases was examined as a function of temperature, Ag deposition rate and coverage, substrate step density, and history of temperature cycling. First-principles calculations of the electronic and geometric structures and vibrational dynamics show the Ge(111)-c(2X8) configuration with Ge adatoms adsorbed on three-fold hollow (T4) sites to be the energetically most favored phase of the Ge(111) surface, among unreconstructed Ge(111), reconstructed Ge(111)-2X1, and Ge(111)-c(2X8) structures. The Ge(111)-Ag(3X1) overlayer of the system has Ge atoms forming a honeycomb chain on a missing top layer reconstructed surface, with metal at 1/3 ML coverage in channel. The Ge (111)-Ag(V3XV3)R30 overlayer contains one monolayer Ag forming inequivalent Ag triangles in a surface unit cell on the missing top layer reconstructed Ge(111) surface. The Ge(111)-Ag(4X4) overlayer formed at low Ag coverage contains two triangular subunits at different heights: one with six Ag adatoms and the other with three Ge adatoms on the intact double layer Ge(111) surface. The temperature and coverage dependent surface phase diagram, obtained by minimizing the surface free energy, captures the main features of the experimental phase diagram.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2019

On the validity of the Arrhenius picture in two-dimensional submonolayer growth

For surface-mediated processes, such as on-surface synthesis, epitaxial growth and heterogeneous catalysis, a constant slope in the Arrhenius diagram of the corresponding rate of interest against inverse temperature, $\log R$ {\it vs} $1/k_B T$, is traditionally interpreted as the existence of a bottleneck elementary reaction (or rate-determining step), whereby the constant slope (or apparent activation energy, $E_{app}^{R}$) reflects the value of the energy barrier for that reaction. Here, we show that a constant value of $E_{app}^{R}$ can be obtained even if control shifts from one elementary reaction to another. In fact, we show that $E_{app}^{R}$ is a weighted average and the leading elementary reaction will change with temperature while the actual energy contribution for every elementary reaction will contain, in addition to the traditional energy barrier, a configurational term directly related to the number of local configurations where that reaction can be performed. For this purpose, we consider kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of two-dimensional submonolayer growth at constant deposition flux, where the rate of interest is the tracer diffusivity. In particular, we focus on the study of the morphology, island density and diffusivity by including a large variety of single-atom, multi-atom and complete-island diffusion events for two specific metallic heteroepitaxial systems, namely, Cu on Ni(111) and Ni on Cu(111), as a function of coverage and temperature.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2019

Prediction of activation energy barrier of island diffusion processes using data-driven approaches

We present models for prediction of activation energy barrier of diffusion process of adatom (1-4) islands obtained by using data-driven techniques. A set of easily accessible features, geometric and energetic, that are extracted by analyzing the variation of the energy barriers of a large number of processes on homo-epitaxial metallic systems of Cu, Ni, Pd, and Ag are used along with the activation energy barriers to train and test linear and non-linear statistical models. A multivariate linear regression model trained with energy barriers for Cu, Pd, and Ag systems explains 92% of the variation of energy barriers of the Ni system, whereas the non-linear model using artificial neural network slightly enhances the success to 93%. Next mode of calculation that uses barriers of all four systems in training, predicts barriers of randomly picked processes of those systems with significantly high correlation coefficient: 94.4% in linear regression model and 97.7% in artificial neural network model. Calculated kinetics parameters such as the type of frequently executed processes and effective energy barrier for Ni dimer and trimer diffusion on the Ni(111) surface obtained from KMC simulation using the predicted (data-enabled) energy barriers are in close agreement with those obtained by using energy barriers calculated from interatomic interaction potential.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗