Investigation of early plasma evolution induced by ultrashort laser pulses

Early plasma is generated owing to high intensity laser irradiation of target and the subsequent target material ionization. Its dynamics plays a significant role in laser-material interaction, especially in the air environment(1-11). Early plasma evolution has been captured through pump-probe shadowgraphy(1-3) and interferometry(1,4-7). However, the studied time frames and applied laser parameter ranges are limited. For example, direct examinations of plasma front locations and electron number densities within a delay time of 100 picosecond (ps) with respect to the laser pulse peak are still very few, especially for the ultrashort pulse of a duration around 100 femtosecond (fs) and a low power density around 10(14) W/cm(2). Early plasma generated under these conditions has only been captured recently with high temporal and spatial resolutions(12). The detailed setup strategy and procedures of this high precision measurement will be illustrated in this paper. The rationale of the measurement is optical pump-probe shadowgraphy: one ultrashort laser pulse is split to a pump pulse and a probe pulse, while the delay time between them can be adjusted by changing their beam path lengths. The pump pulse ablates the target and generates the early plasma, and the probe pulse propagates through the plasma region and detects the non-uniformity of electron number density. In addition, animations are generated using the calculated results from the simulation model of Ref. (12) to illustrate the plasma formation and evolution with a very high resolution (0.04 ~ 1 ps). Both the experimental method and the simulation method can be applied to a broad range of time frames and laser parameters. These methods can be used to examine the early plasma generated not only from metals, but also from semiconductors and insulators.