Femtosecond laser induced structural dynamics and melting of Cu (111) single crystal. An ultrafast time-resolved x-ray diffraction study Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2017 Author(s). Femtosecond, 8.04 keV x-ray pulses are used to probe the lattice dynamics of a 150 nm Cu (111) single crystal on a mica substrate irradiated with 400 nm, 100 fs laser pulses. For pump fluences below the damage and melting thresholds, we observed lattice contraction due to the formation of a blast force and coherent acoustic phonons with a period of 69 ps. At larger pump fluence, solid to liquid phase transition, annealing, and recrystallization were measured in real time by monitoring the intensity evolution of the probing fs x-ray rocking curves, which agreed well with theoretical simulation results. The experimental data suggest that the melting process is a purely thermal phase transition. This study provides, in real time, an ultrafast time-resolved detailed description of the significant processes that occur as a result of the interaction of a femtosecond light-pulse with the Cu (111) crystal surface.

published proceedings

  • JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS

author list (cited authors)

  • Li, R., Ashour, O. A., Chen, J., Elsayed-Ali, H. E., & Rentzepis, P. M.

citation count

  • 14

complete list of authors

  • Li, Runze||Ashour, Omar A||Chen, Jie||Elsayed-Ali, HE||Rentzepis, Peter M

publication date

  • February 2017