Measurement and modeling of strain waves in germanium induced by ultrafast laser pulses

Abstract

Transient reflectivity measurements are used to probe the strain waves induced by ultrashort laser pulses in bulk [100] germanium. The measurement signals are compared to purely analytical model functions based on the known material parameters for germanium. The modeling includes (i) a derivation of analytical solutions to the wave equation for strain waves coupled to the diffusion equation for heat and charge carriers and (ii) an expression for the impact on reflection coefficients that are caused by perturbations to the dielectric function but extended to cover a non-isotropic, uniaxial dielectric tensorial form. The model is held up against transient reflectivity measurements with an s- and a p-polarized probe and with a probe wavelength in the range of 502–710 nm. Excellent agreement is found when comparing the oscillatory shape of the measurement signals to the models. As for the magnitude of the oscillations, the models reproduce the overall trends of the experiment when using the previously published values for the elasto-optical tensor measured under static strain.