@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} } @article{SanderKocKwamenetal.2016, author = {Sander, Mathias and Koc, A. and Kwamen, C. T. and Michaels, H. and Reppert, Alexander von and Pudell, Jan-Etienne and Zamponi, Flavio and Bargheer, Matias and Sellmann, J. and Schwarzkopf, J. and Gaal, P.}, title = {Characterization of an ultrafast Bragg-Switch for shortening hard x-ray pulses}, series = {Journal of applied physics}, volume = {120}, journal = {Journal of applied physics}, publisher = {American Institute of Physics}, address = {Melville}, issn = {0021-8979}, doi = {10.1063/1.4967835}, pages = {7}, year = {2016}, abstract = {We present a nanostructured device that functions as photoacoustic hard x-ray switch. The device is triggered by femtosecond laser pulses and allows for temporal gating of hard x-rays on picosecond (ps) timescales. It may be used for pulse picking or even pulse shortening in 3rd generation synchrotron sources. Previous approaches mainly suffered from insufficient switching contrasts due to excitation-induced thermal distortions. We present a new approach where thermal distortions are spatially separated from the functional switching layers in the structure. Our measurements yield a switching contrast of 14, which is sufficient for efficient hard x-ray pulse shortening. The optimized structure also allows for utilizing the switch at high repetition rates of up to 208 kHz. Published by AIP Publishing.}, language = {en} }