Dynamic surface acoustic response to a thermal expansion source on an anisotropic half space

The surface displacement response to a distributed thermal expansion source is solved using the reciprocity principle. By convolving the strain Greens function with the thermal stress field created by an ultrafast laser illumination, the complete surface displacement on an anisotropic half space induced by laser absorption is calculated in the time domain. This solution applies to the near field surface displacement due to pulse laser absorption. The solution is validated by performing ultrafast laser pump-probe measurements and showing very good agreement between the measured time-dependent probe beam deflection and the computed surface displacement.