Abstract
Electron thermalization and electron–phonon relaxation in metals can be studied bymeasuring the transient change in sample reflectivity after excitation with a femtosecondlaser pulse. This paper describes experiments on ferromagnetic nickel thin films, inparticular addressing the analysis of the reflectivity data and its dependence ontemperature. Specifically engineered samples of optically thin films on a thermallyinsulating barrier layer are used to minimize heat diffusion and hot-electron transport outof the volume under consideration. It is found that lattice expansion and strain wavephenomena significantly contribute to the transient reflectivity, and therefore have to beaccounted for when determining the electron–phonon relaxation time. The measurementsreveal an electron thermalization time of 80 fs, and an electron–phonon energy relaxationtime of 0.3–0.4 ps.
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