Intense ultrashort laser pulses can melt crystals in less than a picosecond but, in spite of over thirty years of active research, for many materials it is not known to what extent thermal and nonthermal microscopic processes cause this ultrafast phenomenon. Here, we perform ab-initio molecular-dynamics simulations of silicon on a laser-excited potential-energy surface, exclusively revealing nonthermal signatures of laser-induced melting. From our simulated atomic trajectories, we compute the decay of five structure factors and the time-dependent structure function. We demonstrate how these quantities provide criteria to distinguish predominantly nonthermal from thermal melting.
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