Comparison of the lifetime of excited electrons in noble metals

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Abstract
We present results for the lifetimes of hot electrons in the noble metals Cu, Ag, and Au obtained by ab initio calculations within the framework of the GW approximation. Our results show an overall good agreement with the available experimental data, especially for Ag. In Cu and Au the experimental lifetimes reveal a sudden increase at low frequencies which cannot be explained within the GW approximation. For frequencies larger than 2 eV the calculated lifetimes are in good agreement with experiment. We also perform a detailed comparison of our calculation with so-called “mass-shell” calculations.