Ultra-transient grating spectroscopy for visualization of surface acoustics

Ultrasonic wave propagation across material surfaces reveals essential information about the materials' elastic behavior. The elastodynamic response of the surface is characterized by the Green's function that fully captures all its direction-dependent and frequency-dependent features. Here we present the first direct experimental visualization of the Green's function, including all its complex details resulting from elastic anisotropy. We achieve this visualization using a dedicated modification of transient grating spectroscopy (TGS), which is a method otherwise well established for measuring Rayleigh-type surface acoustic waves. To overcome the limitations of conventional TGS, we explore near-field thermoacoustic phenomena occurring within TGS experiments. We reveal that, along with the transient standing-wave patterns that diminish within hundreds of nanoseconds, there also emerge ultra-transient oscillations with lifetimes at least an order of magnitude shorter. These ultra-transient effects enable capturing the surface acoustic response with exceptional detail, and the resulting experimental angular dispersion maps strikingly replicate the theoretical Green's functions. By utilizing this feature, ultra-transient grating spectroscopy (UTGS) becomes a powerful new tool for detailed contactless characterization of anisotropic solids, opening new pathways for studying single-crystalline materials utilized in diverse modern application fields, including solid-state cooling via the elastocaloric effect, magnetoelastic devices, or nanoscale electromechanical systems.