@article{SanderHerzogPudelletal.2017, author = {Sander, Mathias and Herzog, Marc and Pudell, Jan-Etienne and Bargheer, Matias and Weinkauf, N. and Pedersen, M. and Newby, G. and Sellmann, J. and Schwarzkopf, J. and Besse, V. and Temnov, V. V. and Gaal, P.}, title = {Spatiotemporal Coherent Control of Thermal Excitations in Solids}, series = {Physical review letters}, volume = {119}, journal = {Physical review letters}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, address = {College Park}, issn = {0031-9007}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.075901}, pages = {102 -- 110}, year = {2017}, abstract = {X-ray reflectivity measurements of femtosecond laser-induced transient gratings (TG) are applied to demonstrate the spatiotemporal coherent control of thermally induced surface deformations on ultrafast time scales. Using grazing incidence x-ray diffraction we unambiguously measure the amplitude of transient surface deformations with sub-angstrom resolution. Understanding the dynamics of femtosecond TG excitations in terms of superposition of acoustic and thermal gratings makes it possible to develop new ways of coherent control in x-ray diffraction experiments. Being the dominant source of TG signal, the long-living thermal grating with spatial period. can be canceled by a second, time-delayed TG excitation shifted by Lambda/2. The ultimate speed limits of such an ultrafast x-ray shutter are inferred from the detailed analysis of thermal and acoustic dynamics in TG experiments.}, language = {en} }