Excitation of surface waves by a short laser pulse in a conductor

We have studied the possibility of exciting surface waves in a conductor, which is irradiated by a focused femtosecond laser pulse incident along the normal to the surface. The time-dependent ponderomotive force is shown to lead to the excitation of surface waves in the terahertz frequency range. It is also shown that the total energy and the pulse amplitude of the surface waves increases with increasing effective electron collision frequency.