DAMPING OF PLASMONS IN METALS: A PRAGMATIC APPROACH FOR THE QUANTIFICATION OF A COMPLEX PROCESS

N. R. ARISTA; J. L. GERVASONI; S. SEGUI

Kielce

Conferencia; HCI2016 - 18th Interna?tional Conference on the Physics of Highly Charged Ions; 2016

The excitation of plasmons and their subsequent decay is of great interest in many branches offundamental and applied physics. In particular, the shape of the plasmon peaks in energy lossspectra of charged particles is determined to a large extent by way the plasmons interact with theelectron gas of the medium and ultimately decay.In the present work we address the problem of quantifying this process within the framework ofthe dielectric formalism. We use various methods to define and assess the damping constant appearing in the Drude's model for the dielectric constant, ranging from empiric fittings to thecalculation of quantum-transition probabilities. We compare the results with the data found in theliterature.