Plasmonic-driven photocatalysis is one of the most vibrant and promising field in nanoscience. Out of the various mechanisms known to activate chemical reactions in molecules interacting with optically excited nanostructures, the one involving production and transfer of Hot Carriers (HCs) is among the most relevant. Over the past decade, along with stunning advances on HCs control and manipulation, a variety of theoretical and computational strategies have been developed to model this phenomenon and explore its underlying physics. These techniques have provided comprehensive understandings of HCs life stages and dynamics, and allowed valuable insights on their role in photocatalysis. However, to date it is hard to extricate within the plethora of methods developed and the growing number of applications they found. The purpose of this review is to survey the approaches employed so far to model HCs photophysics, rationalizing and classifying the different studies in terms of modelization, theoretical approaches, and approximations.

等离子体驱动的光催化是纳米科学中最具活力和前景的领域之一。在已知的激活分子与光激发纳米结构相互作用的化学反应的各种机制中，涉及热载流子（HC）的产生和转移的机制是最相关的之一。在过去的十年中，随着碳氢化合物控制和操纵方面取得了惊人的进步，人们开发了各种理论和计算策略来模拟这种现象并探索其基础物理。这些技术提供了对碳氢化合物生命阶段和动力学的全面了解，并为它们在光催化中的作用提供了宝贵的见解。然而，迄今为止，人们很难摆脱开发出的方法过多和发现的应用数量不断增加的影响。本综述的目的是调查迄今为止用于模拟 HC 光物理的方法，在模型化、理论方法和近似方面对不同的研究进行合理化和分类。