Interaction of femtosecond laser pulses with metal photocathode

The features of interaction of femtosecond laser pulses with photocathode are studied theoretically in this paper. The surface temperature of the metal cathode film while femtosecond laser pulses irradiation is studied with two-temperature model. With a simple photoelectric model we obtain the optimum metal film thickness for the back-illuminated photocathode. The generated ultrashort photocurrent pulses are strongly dependent on the temperature of the electron gas and the lattice during the femtosecond laser pulse irradiation on the photocathode.