Laser Spectroscopy has been developed into a powerful tool for the detection and energy analysis of neutral particles. Laser Induced Fluorescence Spectroscopy (LIF) has yielded a wealth of information about sputtered neutral particles. In addition, Laser Ionization Spectroscopy has recently offered an increased detection sensitivity. In this paper a summary of recent results is given. By combining LIF with other methods capable of measuring densities and energy distributions of sputtered excited atoms in short lived states, new information about sputtering and excitation mechanisms have been recently obtained and will be summarized here
