Unraveling the electronic properties in SiO2 under ultrafast laser irradiation

First-principles simulations were conducted to explore various electronic properties of crystalline SiO2 (α-quartz) under ultrafast laser irradiation. Employing Density Functional Perturbation Theory and the many-body (GW) approximation, we calculated the impact of thermally excited electrons on the electronic specific heat, electron pressure, effective mass, deformation potential, electron-phonon coupling and electron relaxation time of quartz, covering a wide range of electron temperatures, up to 100,000 K. We show that the electron-phonon relaxation time of highly-excited quartz becomes twice faster compared to low-excited states. The deformation potential, which dictates atomic displacement, has a non-monotonic behavior with a well-pronounced minimum at around 16,000 K (2.7 × 1021 cm−3 of excited electrons) where the bond ionicity of the Si-O starts decreasing followed by a cohesion loss at 35,000 K due to the pressure exerted by the excited electrons on the lattice. Consequently, our calculated data, illustrating the evolution of physical parameters, can facilitate simulations of laser-matter interactions and provide predictive insights into the behavior of quartz under experimental conditions.