The photoelastic response of periodic arrays of stripes attached to the surface of a substrate and illuminated by an ultrashort laser pulse were investigated. The samples were gold arrays on silicon and aluminum arrays either on crystalline quartz or on silicon. The metallic stripes had submicrometer lateral dimensions and the spatial periods ranged from about 1 microm up to 5 microm. The substrate being transparent (quartz) or slightly absorbing (silicon) at the laser wavelength (lambda = 750 nm), a laterally modulated thermal stress is generated near the surface of the substrate when a light pulse illuminates the structure. The studies of vibrations involved by the subsequent relaxation processes show that surface acoustic waves at frequency as high as about 5 GHz are excited with the samples consisting of aluminum stripes. In the case of the aluminum samples with the largest lateral spatial periods (aluminum on quartz), the surface acoustic wave propagates outside the illuminated area. In the case of the gold samples, a normal mode of individual bars is observed instead. Experimental evidence shows that these behaviors are mainly governed both by the lateral spatial period of the structure and by the density of the metal.