Electron relaxation effect on the sub-100-fs laser interaction with gold thin film.

The heating of a gold thin film by a single 10 fs laser pulse is modeled by a combined continuum-atomistic method considering the electron relaxation effect. Numerical results show that the temperature evolution and stress propagation proceed in the same manners as those for the subpicosecond laser irradiation. It is also found that the electron relaxation effect is insignificant and could be considerably overestimated by neglecting the ballistic energy transfer in the film.