Abstract

A large amount of both theoretical and experimental work on laser ablation with ultra short pulses has been done until recently. The matter ejection from surface might seem to be thoroughly studied. However, the process of controlled ablation of matter has not been clearly understood and needs further investigation. As the knowledge of ablation threshold allows to explain better the physical mechanisms of short pulse laser ablation, it was the purpose of our study to investigate the ablation threshold of various metal samples with picosecond and femtosecond laser pulses.

© 2000 IEEE