Importance of coupling strength in shaping electron energy loss and phonon spectra of phonon-plasmon systems

Abstract

A systematic analysis of phonon-plasmon coupled excitations in three-dimensional (3D) polar systems is provided through the prism of both raw and integrated electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) and phonon spectra in the whole relevant parametric space, spanned by the adiabaticity parameter and the electron-phonon interaction (EPI) strength. We show that the EPI strength plays a prominent role in distributing spectral weights among excitations, providing an experimentally convenient way to estimate it from integrated spectra. By projecting the excitations onto the phonon degree of freedom, we also report for strong couplings large phonon production contributions, which are of very different origins depending on the adiabaticity parameter. In parallel to this thorough spectral weights analysis, excitations' dispersion evolutions, dampings, and various limiting behaviors are qualitatively and quantitatively correctly accounted for in the whole parametric space.