Temperature Dependence of Longitudinal Optical Phonon Lifetimes in GaP.

Abstract The decay of coherently excited longitudinal optical phonons in GaP has been observed through time delayed coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering measurements with picosecond light pulses. The temperature dependence of the decay is compared to that observed through Raman linewidth measurements and to that predicted theoretically for spontaneous three-phonon decay processes.