Ultrasonic investigation of pulsed laser interaction with solid targets

During the pulsed high power laser target interaction a local heating or material ablation takes place in function of incident laser energy. In both cases a stress wave is induced in the material volume with characteristics determined by the phenomena taking place in the interaction region. Analyses of the detected acoustic wave first peak amplitude and especially of the region of the transversal wave appearance results in a method of interaction regime characterization, ablation threshold determination and multipulse processes in-situ monitoring.