Ultrafast Anisotropic Optical Response and Coherent Acoustic Phonon Generation in Polycrystalline BaTiO3-BiFeO3

Abstract

We optically study the as-yet little explored multiferroic material, BaTiO3-BiFeO3 (BTO-BFO), that has demonstrated enhanced magnetic properties, a higher DC resistance in comparison to BFO, and improved magnetoelectric coupling. Our studies include: ultrafast time resolved differential reflection, optically induced birefringence, and second-harmonic nano-imaging of the ferroic order. We observe a strong sensitivity to pump/probe polarizations, photo-induced ferroelectric poling on a picosecond timescale, as well as the generation of photo-induced coherent acoustic phonons with a frequency of ∼11 GHz. The second-harmonic generation nano-imaging reveals disordered but distinct ferroelectric domain order, percolating even across grain boundaries in the poly-crystalline thin film.