Abstract
A theoretical study on the thermoelastic generation of surface acoustic waves in solid by a pulsed laser is presented by employing the method of eigenfunction expansion. A three-dimensional axisymmetric modeling taking account of both the surface and the sub-surface sources is adopted, in which the thermoelastic mode conversion is considered. The effects of the optical penetration and the spot radius as well as the pulse width of the exciting laser on the pulse width of the surface acoustic waves are discussed.