Laser ablation and surface structuring of selected solid targets

Abstract

Studies in light-matter interaction have grown exponentially since the invention of the first pulsed laser by T. H. Maiman in 1960. While developments like mode-locking (ML) have enabled the generation of light pulses with temporal widths shorter than a few tens of picoseconds (ps), innovations like chirped pulse amplification (CPA) have resulted in the production of fs laser pulses with peak powers ranging from terawatts (TW) to multi-petawatts (PW). These advances in laser technology have opened up various new domains of ultrafast laser-matter interaction. For example, ultrafast lasers facilitate precision laser processing with tremendous practical applications in diverse fields. Furthermore, the unprecedented intensities provided by ultrafast laser pulses are sufficient for the production of dense plasmas, enabling high-order harmonic generation (HHG) for the realization of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light sources