Heating of a metal nanofilm during femtosecond laser pulse absorption

Abstract

We have studied the temperature evolution of electrons and the lattice of a metal nanofilm interacting with a femtosecond s- or p-polarised pulse. It is shown that even if the film thickness is greater than the skin-layer depth, the temperature distribution during the pulse action may be close to the uniform one because of the high electron thermal conductivity, which leads to a rapid redistribution of energy over the film thickness.