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Coherent acoustic pulse emission by ensembles of plasmonic nanoparticles

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Abstract

The ability of a layer of silver nanoparticles with broad size dispersion to excite coherent acoustic phonon wave-packet in its supporting glass substrate following femtosecond laser excitation is tested using time-domain Brillouin scattering in transmission configuration. The generation and propagation over several micrometer distances of gigahertz acoustic phonons in the underlying glass is observed for all investigated samples, involving nanoparticle layers with different morphological properties. The phonon wave-packet exhibits frequency-dependent attenuation rates and amplitudes in the 40–50 GHz acoustic frequency region. The measured attenuation rates are consistent with previous experimental results on silica, indicating that anharmonic interaction of acoustic waves with the thermal phonon bath has dominating contribution to the phonon damping. The features of the acoustic waves emitted by a discontinuous nanoparticle layer are investigated using a simplified theoretical model, allowing to better understand at which condition they are similar to those of the waves emitted by a continuous thin film.

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Data Availability Statement

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes for its equipment financial support within the Optolyse CPER 2015-20 project framework and the ANR project MIXUP (ANR-18-CE39-0010). Yaya Lefkir from Hubert Curien Laboratory is thanked for STEM characterizations and David Troadec from IEMN (France) for the preparation of the FIB lamella.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne, CNRS, Institut d Optique Graduate School, Laboratoire Hubert Curien UMR 5516, 42023, Saint-Etienne, France

    Balint Eles, Vincenzo De Michele, Youcef Ouerdane & Nathalie Destouches

  2. FemtoNanoOptics group, Université de Lyon, CNRS, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Institut Lumière Matière, 69622, Villeurbanne, France

    Aurélien Crut & Natalia Del Fatti

  3. Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, Centrale Marseille, Institut Fresnel, 13013, Marseille, France

    Julien Lumeau & Antonin Moreau

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  1. Balint Eles
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Correspondence to Nathalie Destouches.

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Ultrafast Phenomena from attosecond to picosecond timescales: theory and experiments. Guest editors: Franck Lépine, Lionel Poisson.

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Supplementary Information

The details about the laser-induced nanoparticle reshaping experiment, the sample preparation and characterization methods, the dielectric function of N-BK7 glass and its photon energy derivative, and the transmittance spectra of the samples are provided. (PDF 291 KB)

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Eles, B., Crut, A., Del Fatti, N. et al. Coherent acoustic pulse emission by ensembles of plasmonic nanoparticles. Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top. 232, 2221–2230 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-023-00811-x

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