Melting of Al induced by laser excitation of 2p holes

Abstract

Novel photon sources—such as XUV-or X-ray lasers—allow to selectively excite core excitations in materials. We study the response of a simple metal, Al, to the excitation of 2p holes using molecular dynamics simulations. During the lifetime of the holes, the interatomic interactions in the slab are changed; we calculate these using WIEN2k. We find that the melting dynamics after core-hole excitation is dominated by classical electron-phonon dynamics. The effects of the changed potential surface for excited Al atoms occur on the time scale of 100 fs, corresponding to the Debye time of the lattice.