Correlation of stress-wave profiles and the dynamics of the plasma produced by laser irradiation of plane solid targets
- 1 October 1975
- journal article
- research article
- Published by AIP Publishing in Journal of Applied Physics
- Vol. 46 (10) , 4400-4406
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.321467
Abstract
The interaction of 20‐nsec 300‐MW pulses of 1.06‐μm laser radiation with thick aluminum targets in vacuum has been studied. The time history of the target impulse has been measured with a Sandia quartz gauge. A time sequence of plasma density maps constructed from floating double‐probe data has been used with measured expansion velocities to estimate the plasma momentum. The results show that the stress wave is predominantly produced by about 10% of the evaporated target material which is ionized and expands from the surface in the form of a hot plasma during and shortly after the laser pulse. The estimated momentum of the plasma and neutral emitted particles is 5.6 g cm/sec for a typical case compared with the measured target impulse of 6.1 g cm/sec.This publication has 5 references indexed in Scilit:
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