Ultrafast laser induced structural dynamics probed by time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy

This work aims to study the lattice structural dynamics of metals under laser femtosecond excitation using time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy (Tr-PES). When irradiated by short infrared laser pulses, the thermal out-of-equilibrium state established between hot electrons and a cold lattice rises specific dynamics where the thermodynamic properties of matter are still subject to debate. The theoretical description of highly excited materials is difficult and appeals new experimental results to improve the understanding of these physical processes and material properties. Nonetheless, important challenges arise from the use of Tr-PES. When metals are irradiated with strong femtosecond infrared laser pulses, non-linear effects, like multiphoton ionization, can take place and produce photoelectrons with tenths of eV of kinetic energy. This pump photoelectron background can conceal the probe-induced photoelectron spectrum, and perturb the probe spectrum via Coulomb interactions (called space-charge effect). To overcome these challenges three actions were carried out. We designed and built a 100 eV beamline to avoid the superposition between the pump background and the probe photoelectron spectrum. The pump/probe space-charge effect was extensively studied theoretically and experimentally. Finally, the pump photoemission was greatly reduced in our experiments by carefully tuning the experimental parameters. This led us to perform Tr-PES measurements on copper samples of the lattice structural dynamics following the evolution of the photoelectron spectrum. The experiment constituted a proof-of-principle of the Tr-PES technique to study materials under strong excitation.