Interaction of short laser pulses in wavelength range from infrared to X-ray with metals, semiconductors, and dielectrics
Inogamov, N. A.*; Faenov, A. Ya.*; Zhakhovskii, V. V.*; Skobelev, I. Y.*; Khokhlov, V. A.*; Kato, Yoshiaki* ; Tanaka, Momoko; Pikuz, T. A.*; Kishimoto, Maki; Ishino, Masahiko; Nishikino, Masaharu; Fukuda, Yuji; Bulanov, S. V.; Kawachi, Tetsuya; Petrov, Y. V.*; Anisimov, S. I.*; Fortov, V. E.*
Laser-matter interaction is defined by an electric band structure of condensed matter and frequency of electromagnetic radiation. The thermalization processes are different for optical as compared with X-ray quanta and for metals relative to semiconductors and dielectrics, since the light absorption and electron-electron, electron-ion dynamics are sensitive to the electron population in a conduction band and the width of a forbidden gap. Although the thermalization processes are different, the final state is simply a heated matter. Laser heating creates powerful stresses in a target if duration of laser pulse is short in acoustic time scale. Nucleation and material removal take place under such stresses. Such way of removal is called here the spallative ablation. Thus the spallative ablation is an ablation mechanism universally important for qualitatively different materials and quanta.