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We review the recent progress in experimental and theoretical research of interactions between the acoustic, magnetic and plasmonic transients in hybrid metal-ferromagnet multilayer structures excited by ultrashort laser pulses. The main focus is on understanding the nonlinear aspects of the acoustic dynamics in materials as well as the peculiarities in the nonlinear optical and magneto-optical response. For example, the nonlinear optical detection is illustrated in detail by probing the static magneto-optical second harmonic generation in gold–cobalt–silver trilayer structures in Kretschmann geometry. Furthermore, we show experimentally how the nonlinear reshaping of giant ultrashort acoustic pulses propagating in gold can be quantified by time-resolved plasmonic interferometry and how these ultrashort optical pulses dynamically modulate the optical nonlinearities. An effective medium approximation for the optical properties of hybrid multilayers enables the understanding of novel optical detection techniques. In the discussion we also highlight recent works on the nonlinear magneto-elastic interactions, and strain-induced effects in semiconductor quantum dots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]