Laser picosecond acoustics is a pulse-echo technique for the excitation and detection of ultrashort acoustic pulses in the 1 GHz-1 THz range, and has been applied to a wide variety of thin solid films. However, the optical generation of picosecond acoustic pulses in liquids has not been studied. Here we describe experiments on thin films of liquid Hg and demonstrate the excitation and detection of picosecond acoustic pulses. This type of study should lead to an understanding of the acoustic generation mechanisms in liquid metals on ultrashort time scales.
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