Excitation of phonons by electromagnetic pulses: from micro to macro description of the process

The paper establishes a correspondence between the quantum-mechanical formula for the probability of excitation of a microtarget by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and the expression known from the electrodynamics of continuous media for the dissipation of the energy of a non-monochromatic field in a dispersive medium. This expression is used to calculate the excitation energy of transverse optical phonons in GaAs under the action of a Gaussian unipolar pulse. The dependences of the transferred energy on the pulse duration and current time are calculated and analyzed.