Comparison of the lifetime of excited electrons in noble metals

We present results for the lifetimes of hot electrons in the noble metals C u, Ag, and Au obtained by ab initio calculations within the framework of th e GW approximation. Our results show an overall good agreement with the ava ilable experimental data, especially for Ag. I,Cu and Au the experimental l ifetimes reveal, a sudden increase at low frequencies which cannot be expla ined within the GW approximation. For frequencies larger than 2 eV the calc ulated lifetimes are in good agreement with experiment. We also perform a d etailed comparison of our calculation with so-called "mass-shell" calculati ons.