Instability at the melting threshold of laser-irradiated silicon

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Symmetry breaking at the silicon melting threshold is demonstrated to result from an increase of reflectivity associated with a strong decrease of the laser penetration depth. One shows analytically that starting with a uniform irradiation, one can produce periodic solid and liquid stripes with the average surface temperature at the melting value and liquid regions slightly hotter than solid ones in contradiction with the previous idea of an undercooled liquid. The pattern size has to be smaller than a critical value of the order of the laser penetration depth.