Resonantly excited coherent optical phonons in wide-gap semiconductor ZnTe

We report the first observations of resonantly excited coherent optical phonons in bulk ZnTe using noncollinear optical parametric amplifiers. As the pulse photon energy approaches the bandgap, the amplitudes of coherent phonons increase. Since pulse fluence and polarization dependencies show that generation mechanism of resonantly excited coherent phonons is impulsive stimulated Raman scattering, this enhancement can be concluded to be the result of the resonant Raman effect.