Pump pulse duration dependence of coherent phonon amplitudes in antimony

Coherent optical phonons of A_1k and E_k symmetry in antimony have been studied using the femtosecond pump–probe technique. By varying the pump-pulse duration and keeping the probe duration constant, it was shown that the amplitude of coherent phonons of both symmetries exponentially decreases with increasing pulse width. It was found that the amplitude decay rate for the fully symmetric phonons with larger frequency is greater than that of the doubly degenerate phonons, whereas the frequency and lifetime for coherent phonons of both symmetries do not depend on the pump-pulse duration. Based on this data, the possibility of separation between dynamic and kinematic contributions to the generation mechanism of coherent phonons is discussed.