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Self-Induced Decay of Intense Laser Pulse into a Pair of Surface Plasmons

We show theoretically that an intense femtosecond optical pulse incident normally on a metal surface tends to decay into a pair of counter-propagating surface plasmon-polaritons (SPPs). The interference field heats the medium periodically, which causes a periodic permittivity perturbation and resonantly amplifies the magnitudes of SPPs. The instability growth time is only 10-50 fs for typical metals at damaging laser fluences. This mechanism is promising for the interpretation of laser-induced periodic surface structures formation in a single-pulse pumping regime.