OBSERVATION OF COHERENT OPTICAL PHONONS IN BII3

Resonant coherent lattice vibrations in the vicinity of the indirect absorption edge in a BiI3 layered crystal are observed in a femtosecond pump-probe experiment. Coherent optical phonons that are impulsively excited by femtosecond pump pulses modulate the phase of probe pulses, causing oscillation of the probe spectrum in time. This oscillation, which has a period given by the period of the oscillation, continues for more than 100 cycles. We speculate that the coherent phonon-assisted indirect exciton transitions also contribute to the data.