Abstract

Lithium and potassium niobate are widely used as nonlinear optical elements, components of integrated optical devices, and holographic storage media. Concems about long term laser-induced damage¹ and more recent interest in processing, patterning, and analyzing the surfaces of these materials using lasers² lend interest to the dynamics of laser-induced desorption. We have studied laser-induced desorption of excited atoms from these materials, since excited desorbed atoms are created just at or above the surface. Our results suggest that excited atoms are probably not created through multiphoton. excitation of gas phase ground State atoms but that there are distinct selective electronic mechanisms associated with the desorption of the different species.

© 1990 Optical Society of America