The Role of Thermal Excitation of D Band Electrons in Ultrafast Laser Interaction With Noble (Cu) and Transition (Pt) Metals

The temperature dependences of the electron heat capacity and electron-phonon coupling factor for noble (Cu) and transition (Pt) metals are investigated based on the electron density of states (DOS) obtained from ab initio electronic structure calculations. For Cu, d band electrons could be thermally excited when the electron temperature exceeds ∼3000 K, leading to a significant increase, up to an order of magnitude, in the electron-phonon coupling factor and strong enhancement of the electron heat capacity away from the linear dependence on the electron temperature, which is commonly used in most of the current computational and theoretical investigations of ultrafast laser interactions with metals. Opposite to the case in Cu, the thermal excitation of d band electrons in Pt leads to a monotonic decrease of the electron-phonon coupling factor and contributes to significant negative deviations of the electron heat capacity from the linear dependence in the range of electron temperatures that are typically realized in ultrafast laser material processing applications. Strong and drastically different temperature dependences of the thermophysical properties predicted for Cu and Pt point to the importance of the electron DOS effects and the necessity of full consideration of thermal excitation of d band electrons for realistic modeling of short pulse laser interaction with noble and transition metals.