We review the recent progress in experimental and theoretical research of
interactions between the acoustic, magnetic and plasmonic transients in hybrid
metal-ferromagnet multilayer structures excited by ultrashort laser pulses. The
main focus is on understanding the nonlinear aspects of the acoustic dynamics
in materials as well as the peculiarities in the nonlinear optical and
magneto-optical response. For example, the nonlinear optical detection is
illustrated in details by probing the static magneto-optical second harmonic
generation in gold-cobalt-silver trilayer structures in Kretschmann geometry.
Furthermore, we show experimentally how the nonlinear reshaping of giant
ultrashort acoustic pulses propagating in gold can be quantified by
time-resolved plasmonic interferometry and how these ultrashort optical pulses
dynamically modulate the optical nonlinearities. The effective medium
approximation for the optical properties of hybrid multilayers facilitates the
understanding of novel optical detection techniques. In the discussion we
highlight recent works on the nonlinear magneto-elastic interactions, and
strain-induced effects in semiconductor quantum dots.Comment: 30 pages, 12 figures, to be published as a Topical Review in the
Journal of Optic
