Transient Energy and Heat Transport in Metals

Abstract

A recently developed Shastry formalism for energy transport is used to analyze the temporal behavior of the energy and heat transport in metals. Comparison with Cattaneo’s equation is performed. Both models show the transition between ballistic and diffusive regimes. Furthermore, because the new model considers the discrete character of the lattice, it highlights some new phenomena such as oscillations in the energy transport at very short time scales. 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 ballistic modes to diffusive ones as energy propagates in the material and it is transformed into heat. While the diffusive contribution shows an almost exponentially decaying behavior with time, the non-diffusive part shows a damped oscillating behavior. The origin of this oscillation will be discussed as well as the effect of temperature on the dynamics of the energy modes transport.