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Updated: Aug 11, 2026

Investigation of Early Plasma Evolution Induced by Ultrashort Laser Pulses
Published on: July 2, 2012
Time-resolved explosion of intense-laser-heated clusters
1Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.
Abstract:
We investigate the femtosecond explosive dynamics of intense laser-heated argon clusters by measuring the cluster complex transient polarizability. The time evolution of the polarizability is characteristic of competition in the optical response between supercritical and subcritical density regions of the expanding cluster. The results are consistent with time-resolved Rayleigh scattering measurements, and bear out the predictions of a recent laser-cluster interaction model [H. M. Milchberg, S. J. McNaught, and E. Parra, Phys. Rev. E 64, 056402 (2001)]].

