Dynamics of femtosecond laser-induced periodic surface structures on metals

We perform a comparison study of periodic structures on the surfaces of three different noble metals, Cu, Ag, and Au, following femtosecond laser radiation. Under identical experimental conditions, laser-induced surface patterns show distinctly different level of morphological clearness on the three different metals. Simply calculations based on metal melting fail to explain the pattern differences. We show that our observation result from the competition of two ultrafast processes, electron-phonon energy coupling and hot electron diffusion, following femtosecond laser heating of metals.