Nanosecond dynamics of a gallium mirror's light-induced reflectivity   change
  Transient pump-probe optical reflectivity measurements of the nano/microsecond dynamics of a fully reversible, light-induced, surface-assisted metallization of gallium interfaced with silica are reported. The metallization leads to a considerable increase in the interface's reflectivity when solid a-gallium is on the verge of melting. The reflectivity change was found to be a cumulative effect that grows with light intensity and pulse duration. The reflectivity relaxes back to that of alpha-gallium when the excitation is withdrawn in a time that increases critically at gallium's melting point. The effect is attributed to a non-thermal light-induced structural phase transition. 
V. Albanis (1), S. Dhanjal (1), V. I. Emelyanov (3), V. A. Fedotov   (1), K. F. MacDonald (1), P. Petropoulos (2), D. J. Ric...