We report the first systematic femtosecond pump-probe measurements of the electron-phonon coupling constant X in thin films of Cu, Au, Cr, Ti, W, Nb, V, Pb, NbN, and V36a. The agreement between our measured X, values and those obtained by other techniques is excellent, thus confirming recent theoretical predictions of Allen. By depositing thin Cu overlayers when necessary, we can extend this technique to nearly any metallic thin film.

We report time domain observations of coherent lattice vibrations in bismuth and antimony. Phonons are impulsively generated, and detected through reflectivity modulation with 70 fs pulses of laser light at 1.98 eV. With this technique, we demonstrate that coherent lattice oscillations can be studied by reflection in opaque materials, but with selection rules which may differ from conventional impulsive stimulated Raman scattering.

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