Leonid V. Zhigilei

Melting is a common and well-studied phenomenon that still reveals new facets when triggered by laser excitation and probed with ultrafast electron diffraction. Recent experimental evidence of anomalously slow nanosecond-scale melting of thin gold films irradiated by femtosecond laser pulses motivates computational efforts aimed at revealing the underlying mechanisms of melting. Atomistic simulations reveal that a combined effect of lattice superheating and relaxation of laser-induced stresses ensures the dominance of the homogeneous melting mechanism at all energies down to the melting threshold and keeps the time scale of melting within ~100 picoseconds. The much longer melting times and the prominent contribution of heterogeneous melting inferred from the experiments cannot be reconciled with the atomistic simulations by any reasonable variation of the electron-phonon coupling strength, thus suggesting the need for further coordinated experimental and theoretical efforts aimed at addressing the mechanisms and kinetics of laser-induced melting in the vicinity of melting threshold.