Molecular dynamics studies of ultrafast laser-induced nonthermal melting

Molecular Dynamics (MD) is employed to investigate nonthermal melting triggered by coherent phonon excitation in bismuth telluride, which has Peierls distortion in the lattice structure. Results showed that the structural distortion caused by coherent phonons appears as early as 80 fs, while it takes several picoseconds for the whole phonon-excited area to evolve into a liquid state. It was also found that the temperature in the phonon-excited area rises quickly within tens of femtoseconds, while the rest of the lattice remains at the initial temperature even after several picoseconds, which is separated from the high temperature region across a thin transition area. This phenomenon is analogous to the heat transfer across a solid–liquid interface, even though in our case there is no abrupt solid-liquid interface between the cold lattice and the quasiliquid.