Interband excitation and carrier relaxation as displacive driving force for coherent phonons

We report on displacive excitation of large amplitude coherent lattice motions in TiO2 under resonant conditions using sub-6-femtosecond UV pulses. Calculations of non-equilibrium potential energy surfaces reveal a new displacive mechanism for the coherent phonon generation, where a unidirectional displacement of the phonon potential occurs both instantaneously due to carrier excitation and dynamically due to cooling of the hot photo-excited carriers. The carrier cooling dynamics in TiO2 are faster than the phonon period, resulting in an initially anharmonic lattice motion. This effect manifests itself in an effective phase shift of the coherent phonon oscillation, in good agreement between our experiments and the calculations

Interband excitation and carrier relaxation as displacive driving force for coherent phonons

We report on displacive excitation of large amplitude coherent lattice motions in TiO2 under resonant conditions using sub-6-femtosecond UV pulses. Calculations of non-equilibrium potential energy surfaces reveal a new displacive mechanism for the coherent phonon generation, where a unidirectional displacement of the phonon potential occurs both instantaneously due to carrier excitation and dynamically due to cooling of the hot photo-excited carriers. The carrier cooling dynamics in TiO2 are faster than the phonon period, resulting in an initially anharmonic lattice motion. This effect manifests itself in an effective phase shift of the coherent phonon oscillation, in good agreement between our experiments and the calculations

Attosecond Time Resolved Photoemission from Core and Valence States of Magnesium

We report on laser-assisted attosecond photoemission from single-crystalline magnesium. In strong contrast to the previously investigated transition metal tungsten, photoelectron wave packets originating from the localized core level and delocalized valence-band states are launched simultaneously from the solid within the experimental uncertainty of 20 as. This phenomenon is shown to be compatible with a heuristic model based on free-particle-like propagation of the electron wave packets generated inside the crystal by the attosecond excitation pulse and their subsequent interaction with the assisting laser field at the metal-vacuum interface

Ultrafast probe of magnetization dynamics in multiferroic CoCr2O4 and Co0.975Ge0.025Cr2O4

We report on element resolved ultrafast magnetization dynamics in multiferroic CoCr2O4 and Co0.975Ge0.025Cr2O4 after optical excitation above the electronic band gap. We observe demagnetization dynamics in the range of several picoseconds, up to two orders of magnitude faster than previously reported demagnetization in other ferrimagnetic insulators. Moreover, we find that the dynamics of the two magnetic ions differ significantly just below the Curie point. The dynamics of the low temperature multiferroic phase are almost two times slower than those in the ferrimagnetic phase. This suggests that the additional magnetic cycloidal component, which is coupled to electric polarization at low temperatures, might influence the ultrafast magnetization dynamic