Exchange and correlation effects on density excitation spectra of metallic quantum wires at finite temperature

Abstract

We have studied the effect of exchange and correlations on the density excitation spectra of metallic quantum wires at finite temperature. The correlations are treated by incorporating the first-order self and exchange contributions into the random-phase approximation (RPA). Numerical results are presented for the spectra of the density response function and the plasmon dispersion for the gold wire on Si(557) substrate—a system studied recently by Nagao et al. (2006 Phys. Rev. Lett. 97 116802) for plasmons using electron energy loss spectroscopy. Our results for plasmons are found to agree with the experimental data. Though the first-order correction is small at currently accessible wire parameters, it becomes significant with increasing coupling parameter r_s. The effect of temperature on plasmons is found to be small for the wire system investigated experimentally. However, temperature has a significant effect on the spectra of the response function. We have also calculated the static structure factor, the pair-correlation function and the correlation energy at zero temperature in the first-order theory to check its applicability in dealing with correlations. Results are compared directly with the available Monte Carlo simulation data. It is found that the static correlation functions improve significantly over the RPA with the increase of r_s. On the other hand, the correlation energy shows very good agreement for r_s ≤ 5 and wire widths b ≥ a₀. For smaller b, the agreement is good up to relatively smaller r_s.