Near-infrared-terahertz hyper-Raman spectroscopy of an excited silicon surface.

We recorded the hyper-Raman spectra resulting from the interaction of a near-infrared (near-IR) picosecond pulse and a terahertz (THz) ultrashort pulse at the surface of a (111) silicon sample. A simple model is proposed to analyze the evolution of the hyper-Raman spectra vs the time delay between the near-IR and THz pulses. It links the hyper-Raman spectra to the multi-phonon absorption in silicon. This approach makes it possible to demonstrate that, during carrier generation by the near-IR pulse, the two-phonon and three-phonon absorption bands are enhanced in modes involving optical phonons. This process results from the very rapid and strong population of the optical phonons induced by the photo-generated hot carriers. It occurs over a few hundreds of femtoseconds and lasts throughout the duration of the near-IR pulse.