Investigation of the dependence of the coherent dynamics of a bismuth lattice on the crystal excitation level

Fully symmetric coherent phonons in bismuth have been investigated in a wide range of pumppulse energies by the pump-probe method using femtosecond laser pulses. It has been shown that in the linear regime, which is implemented only for low pump intensities, the coherent amplitude is proportional to the pump intensity, whereas the relaxation rate of the coherent state and its frequency remain unchanged. In the nonlinear regime, which can be divided into superlinear and sublinear regions, the relaxation rate of a photoinduced lattice state can be approximated by a two-component response, where only one component depends strongly on the pump intensity. The nature of the coherence of the phonon subsystem, which is created by an ultrashort laser pulse, is discussed on the basis of the analysis of the data.