Comment on " Ab initio evidence for nonthermal characteristics in ultrafast laser melting"

Lian et al. [Phys. Rev. B 94, 184310 (2016)] claim that they were able to show evidence of nonthermal characteristics during laser-induced ultrafast melting in silicon by using a time-dependent density functional theory package. In this Comment, we show that their simulated silicon crystal was not even molten within the performed simulation. This raises serious doubts about the validity of the scientific findings regarding the nonthermal nature of laser-induced ultrafast melting made in their paper. Furthermore, we demonstrate that their presented phonon band structure is unphysical and uncover crucial inconsistencies throughout their paper, which additionally question the credibility of their drawn conclusions.