Delay of laser excited electron/hole interaction with germanium lattice

Abstract

Laser pump/XAFS probe study of Ge using the high efficiency facility at PNC/XOR CAT at sector 20 of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) has discovered some surprising results of how the excited electrons/hole (e/h) decay. The 200 femtosecond (fs) pulse laser is triggered at the frequency of the APS ring so as to use the x-rays of one pulse of the 24 singlet mode at 100% efficiency. The higher efficiency of the use of the ring's x-rays (about two orders more efficient than usual) allowed the measurement of XAFS spectra at a large number of delay times between laser pump and X-ray probe and at different laser powers. The XAFS data determined the time dependence of the relative distances and their vibration amplitudes of the first and second Ge neighbors. The laser pulse excites a classical long wavelength optical mode that within 0.1 picoseconds (ps) or so excites only the vibrations of the 1st neighbor while to excite the second neighbor requires decay of the excited e/h through coupling with incoherent phonons. The surprising result is that this decay is delayed 11 ps, independent of the laser power as it is increased by a factor of two. © 2009 IOP Publishing Ltd.