Role of occupied d bands in the dynamics of excited electrons and holes in Ag -: art. no. 045103

The role that occupied d bands play in the inelastic lifetime of bulk and surface states in Ag is investigated from the knowledge of the quasiparticle self-energy. In the case of bulk electrons, sp bands are taken to be free-electron-like. For surface states, the surface band structure of sp states is described with the use of a realistic one-dimensional Hamiltonian. The presence of occupied d states is considered in both cases by introducing a polarizable background. We obtain inelastic lifetimes of bulk electrons that are in good agreement with first-principles band-structure calculations. Our surface-state lifetime calculations indicate that the agreement with measured lifetimes of both crystal-induced and image-potential-induced surface states on Ag(100) and Ag(111) is considerably improved when the screening of d electrons is taken into account.