Figure 4: The time-dependent excitations in Ag₅₅.

(a) The number of excited electrons on every eigen state as a function of time. Several important eigen states are labelled. The major excitations are onto the 302nd and 303rd eigen states. (b) The energies stored in the plasmon and single-particle excitations. The blue line is the single-particle energy generated by the plasmon, which is defined as the energy difference in the single-particle mode between the real system (rt-TDDFT simulation) and the non-interacting system (in which plasmons cannot exist) under the same laser illumination. The pink-dashed line is an exponential decay of exp(−ω_pt/Q) with Q=13.3. (c,d) The number of excited electrons (positive) and holes (negative) as a function of the corresponding eigen energy with respect to the Fermi energy at t=8 and 30 fs. At 8 fs, most excitations are around the Fermi energy and at 30 fs the excitations are concentrated in a few sharp peaks. (e, f) The number of excited carriers under a strong laser illumination. We observe some high-energy excitations at 30 fs (circled by red), which indicates nonlinear effects.