Generation of high energy density by fs-laser-induced confined microexplosion

Confined microexplosion produced by a tightly focused fs-laser pulse inside transparent material proved to be an efficient and inexpensive method for achieving high energy density up to several MJ per cm3 in the laboratory table-top experiments. First studies already confirmed the generation of TPa-range pressure, the formation of novel super-dense material phases and revealed an unexpected phenomenon of spatial separation of ions with different masses in hot non-equilibrium plasma of confined microexplosion. In this paper, we show that the intense focused pulse propagation accompanied by a gradual increase of ionization nonlinearity changes the profile and spectrum of the pulse. We demonstrate that the motion of the ionization front in the direction opposite to the pulse propagation reduces the absorbed energy density. The voids in our experiments with fused silica produced by the microexplosion-generated pressure above Young's modulus indicate, however, that laser fluence up to 50 times above the ionization threshold is effectively absorbed in the bulk of the material. The analysis shows that the ion separation is enhanced in the non-ideal plasma of microexplosion. These findings open new avenues for the studies of high-pressure material transformations and warm dense matter conditions by confined microexplosion produced by intense fs-laser

Expansion-limited aggregation of nanoclusters in a single-pulse laser-produced plume

Formation of carbon nanoclusters in a single-laser-pulse created ablation plume was studied both in vacuum and in a noble gas environment at various pressures. The developed theory provides cluster radius dependence on combination of laser parameters, properties of ablated material, and type and pressure of an ambient gas in agreement with experiments. The experiments were performed on carbon nanoclusters formed by laser ablation of graphite targets with 12 picosecond 532 nm laser pulses at MHz-range repetition rate in a broad range of ambient He, Ar, Kr, and Xe gas pressures from 2× 10-2 to 1500 Torr. The experimental results confirmed our theoretical prediction that the average size of the nanoparticles depends weakly on the type of the ambient gas used, and is determined exclusively by the single laser pulse parameters even at the repetition rate as high as 28 MHz with the time gap 36 ns between the pulses. The most important finding relates to the fact that in vacuum the cluster size is mainly determined by hydrodynamic expansion of the plume while in the ambient gas it is controlled by atomic diffusion in the gas. We demonstrate that the ultrashort pulses can be used for production of clusters with the size less than the critical value, which separates the particles with properties drastically different from those of a material in a bulk. The presented results of experiments on formation of carbon nanoclusters are in close agreement with the theoretical scaling. The developed theory is applicable for cluster formation from any monatomic material, such as silicon for example

Excitation of Coherent Phonons in Crystalline B: theory for driving atomic vibrations by femtosecond pulses

In this paper we present experimental and theoretical studies of reflectivity oscillations of an optical probe beam reflected from a single-crystal of bismuth excited by 35 fs laser pulses at deposited energy density above the melting temperature. Coherent and incoherent lattice dynamics as well as electrons dynamics were investigated starting from the reflectivity changes, measured with high accuracy ΔR/R < 10. The complex behaviour of the reflectivity could not be explained in the light of the existing theories. Therefore, we developed a new theory, starting from the very basic principles of lasermatter interaction, which shows good agreement with experimental results. We establish a direct dependence of the transient reflectivity on atomic motions driven by electron temperature gradient through electron-phonon coupling

Cluster formation through the action of a single picosecond laser pulse

We demonstrate experimentally and describe theoretically the formation of carbon nanoclusters created by single picosecond laser pulses. We show that the average size of a nanocluster is determined exclusively by single laser pulse parameters and is independent of the gas fill (He, Ar, Kr, Xe) and pressure in a range from 20mTorr to 200 Torr. Simple kinetic theory allows estimates to be made of the cluster size, which are in qualitative agreement with the experimental data. We conclude that the role of the buffer gas is to induce a transition between thin solid film formation on the substrate and foam formation by diffusing the clusters through the gas, with no significant effect upon the average cluster size

Picosecond high-repetition-rate pulsed laser ablation of dielectrics: the effect of energy accumulation between pulses

We report experiments on the ablation of arsenic trisulphide and silicon using high-repetition-rate (megahertz) trains of picosecond pulses. In the case of arsenic trisulphide, the average single pulse fluence at ablation threshold is found to be >100 times lower when pulses are delivered as a 76-MHz train compared with the case of a solitary pulse. For silicon, however, the threshold for a 4.1-MHz train equals the value for a solitary pulse. A model of irradiation by high-repetition-rate pulse trains demonstrates that for arsenic trisulphide energy accumulates in the target surface from several hundred successive pulses, lowering the ablation threshold and causing a change from the laser-solid to laser-plasma mode as the surface temperature increases

Modification of refractive index by a single femtosecond pulse confined inside a bulk of a photorefractive crystal

We demonstrate that the interaction of intense femtosecond pulse with photorefractive crystal at conditions close to the optical-breakdown threshold differs drastically from that of long pulse and cw illumination. Our theoretical estimations show that the high number density of excited electrons modifies the dielectric function leading to the transient negative change in the refractive index, Δn/ n0 ∼- 10-2 that vanishes on nanosecond time scale. Moreover, the high-frequency laser field, two orders of magnitude larger than the field of spontaneous polarization, prevents the stationary charge distribution during the pulse. The diffusion and recombination of charge carriers continues over a nanosecond time scale, after the end of the pulse. The main driving force for the current after the pulse is the field of spontaneous polarization in the ferroelectric medium: the current terminates when the field of charge separation balances this field. We show here that the stationary modification of refractive index according to this model is then independent of the polarization of the pump light beam, in agreement with experiments, and saturates at Δn 10-3 in semiquantitative fit to the experimental data

Momentum transfer in a standing optical vortex

A field superposition of singular beams incident on, and then reflected from a mirror has been investigated. It was demonstrated that the standing optical wave, which contains a vortex, possesses an orbital angle momentum where the energy flux circulates only in the azimuth direction of the beam. We show in this paper that the standing light wave containing the optical vortex transfers angular momentum to a substance located in the field of the vortex without moving the substance in the azimuth or radial directions. This property of the standing vortex present an opportunity to form the three-dimensional optical traps, gasdynamic and hydrodynamic vortices, in a localised volume by a direct transfer of the orbital angular momentum from the optical vortex.Comment: English has been corrected; a second address entered; Eq.(13) and (14) corrected. 11 pages, including 1 figur