Study of Thermal and Coherent A 1g Phonons in Bismuth Telluride

Totally symmetric A (1g) phonons are studied for the equilibrium and coherent states of a Bi2Te3 lattice. Equilibrium phonons were investigated in the frequency domain by the method of spontaneous Raman scattering, whereas coherent phonons were studied by the method of active femtosecond spectroscopy in the time domain. In the latter case, femtosecond laser pulses were used both for generating and detecting coherent A (1g) phonons having a well-defined phase allowing the selective optical control of the lattice dynamics. A comparison of the results obtained in the frequency and time domains suggests that diagonal and nondiagonal elements of the density matrix of lattice excitations relax with the same characteristic time to the equilibrium and zero values, respectively.