Operator-Level Description of Transient Thermal Grating Dynamics Across Transport Regimes

Abstract

Transient thermal grating (TTG) experiments provide a powerful means of probing material properties and resolving their dynamics at small spatio-temporal scales through the temporal response to a spatially periodic excitation. However, quantitative interpretation of the measured transient requires a forward model that consistently connects energy deposition, subsequent transport, and detection within the finite space-time window of the experiment, for which such a formulation is still lacking in TTG. Here, we formulate a continuum, operator-based TTG forward model in which the physical processes from energy deposition to detection of the evolving spatial mode are treated within a unified transfer-function framework. Thermal transport dynamics is represented by a temporal memory kernel, allowing unresolved relaxation processes to be incorporated at the scale of experimental observability without imposing an a priori microscopic transport mechanism. The formulation provides a basis for inferring effective material properties and the dynamics resolved within the experimental window, which can subsequently be related to material-specific microscopic degrees of freedom and their interactions. In addition, analysis of the resulting TTG transients shows that the observability of flux memory is not equivalent to the presence of oscillations in the measured response. Oscillations provide a clear signature when finite flux-relaxation dynamics becomes resolved on the experimental time scale, whereas their absence does not imply the Fourier limit. Memory can instead remain observable through non-oscillatory modifications of the transient shape and characteristic time scales.