Hot electron cooling in graphite: Supercollision versus hot phonon decay

Abstract

Disorder-assisted electron-phonon scattering processes (supercollision processes) have been reported to dominate the cooling of hot carriers in graphene. Here, we determine to what extent this type of relaxation mechanism governs the hot carrier dynamics in the parent compound graphite. Electron temperature transients derived from time- and angle-resolved extreme ultraviolet photoemission spectra are analyzed based on a three-temperature model which considers electron gas, optical phonons, and acoustic phonons as coupled subsystems. In the probed fluence regime of $0.035--1.4\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{mJ}/{\mathrm{cm}}^{2}$, we find no indications for supercollision processes being involved in the cooling of the hot carriers. The data are, by contrast, compatible with a hot phonon assisted mechanism involving anharmonic coupling between optical phonons and acoustic phonons, a process which has previously been suggested for graphite. We attribute the striking difference to the reported findings for (substrate-supported) graphene to the low defect density of highly ordered pyrolitic graphite.