Theoretical studies of pulsed photothermal phenomena in semiconductors

This paper presents a thorough theoretical study of pulsed photothermal phenomena in semiconductors. The explicit expressions of the temporal distributions of plasma wave, thermal wave, and displacement field within a finite semiconductor sample, excited by an incidence of the pulsed laser, are derived analytically. We simulate numerically the time evolutions of the pulsed photothermal optical reflectance, the pulsed photothermal optical beam deflection (i.e., Mirage effect), and the pulsed photothermal displacement signals for different characterized parameters of semiconductor samples. The theoretical works are significant to provide a quantitative time- and space-resolved study of dynamic deexcitation processes and characterization of parameters of semiconductor samples under normal experimental conditions by the pulsed photothermal techniques.