Plasmon-phonon-assisted electron-hole recombination in silicon at high laser fluence

Abstract
We present both theoretical and experimental results in silicon which clearly demonstrate that at time scales of 20 to 40 ps, after the pump laser pulse and at fluences greater than 100 mJ/cm2, the carrier density of the electron-hole plasma drops for increasing fluence; this is not explained by Auger recombination. We show that this drop is specific to plasmon-phonon-assisted recombination, which naturally explains this behavior.