Femtosecond nonlinear ultrasonics in gold probed with ultrashort surface plasmons

Abstract

Fundamental interactions induced by lattice vibrations on ultrafast time scales become increasingly important for modern nanoscience and technology. Experimental access to the physical properties of acoustic phonons in the THz frequency range and over the entire Brillouin zone is crucial for understanding electric and thermal transport in solids and their compounds. Here, we report on the generation and nonlinear propagation of giant (1 percent) acoustic strain pulses in hybrid gold/cobalt bilayer structures probed with ultrafast surface plasmon interferometry. This new technique allows for unambiguous characterization of arbitrary ultrafast acoustic transients. The giant acoustic pulses experience substantial nonlinear reshaping already after a propagation distance of 100 nm in a crystalline gold layer. Excellent agreement with the Korteveg-de Vries model points to future quantitative nonlinear femtosecond THz-ultrasonics at the nano-scale in metals at room temperature.

References in corpus (5)

• The marriage of plasmonics, magnetism, acoustics and ultrafast optics
• Coherent magnetization precession in ferromagnetic (Ga,Mn)As induced by picosecond acoustic pulses
• Ultrafast Magneto-Acoustics in Nickel Films
• Magnetization switching by ultrashort acoustic pulses
• Effect of picosecond strain pulses on thin layers of the ferromagnetic semiconductor (Ga,Mn)(As,P)

Cited by in corpus (16)

• The marriage of plasmonics, magnetism, acoustics and ultrafast optics
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• Anatomy of inertial magnons in ferromagnets
• Generation of exchange magnons in thin ferromagnetic films by ultrashort acoustic pulses
• Nonlinear Acoustics at GHz Frequencies in a Viscoelastic Fragile Glass Former
• Spatio-temporal coherent control of thermal excitations in solids
• Detection of shorter-than-skin-depth acoustic pulses in a metal film via transient reflectivity
• Sub-picosecond acoustic pulses at buried GaP/Si interfaces
• Hybrid magnon-phonon cavity for large-amplitude terahertz spin-wave excitation
• Ultrafast Laser-Induced Dynamics of Non-Equilibrium Electron Spill-Out in Nanoplasmonic Bilayers
• Progressive magnetic softening of ferromagnetic layers in multilayer ferromagnet-nonmagnet systems and the role of granularity
• Ultra-high frequency magnetic resonance through strain-spin coupling in perpendicular magnetic multi-layers