The detailed understanding of energy transfer between hot electrons and lattice vibrations at non-cryogenic temperatures relies primarily upon the interpretation of ultrafast pump–probe experiments, where thermo-optical models provide insight into the relationship between optical response and temperature of the respective sub-systems; in one of the more studied materials, gold, the Drude model provides this relationship. In this work, we investigate the role of intra- and interband contributions applied to transient optical responses in ultrafast pump–probe experiments using both experiments and first-principle calculations, with probe wavelengths spanning from UV wavelengths into the infrared. We find that during conditions of electron–phonon equilibrium, the Drude model is not applicable to visible wavelengths due to interband transitions. Instead, at probe wavelengths far from these interband transitions (e.g., infrared wavelengths), the optical response is linearly proportional to the temperature of the phonon sub-system and is no longer obfuscated by Fermi-smearing, thus greatly simplifying the extraction of the electron–phonon coupling factor. Our intraband-probe measurements on the electron–phonon coupling factor of Au are in excellent agreement with analytical models and ab initio calculations; we observe a constant electron–phonon coupling factor up to electron temperatures of at least K.
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