空气击穿过程中电子损耗对击穿阈值的影响

通过对高功率激光空气击穿的物理机理、电离机制的讨论,得到空气击穿过程中激光焦区内自由电子密度公式。考虑电子弹性碰撞损耗、电子复合损耗影响,给出了新的击穿阈值公式。该公式的计算结果同实验数据一致。     

多光子过程

假设能量为1焦耳、持续时间约几亳微秒的Q开关激光脉冲聚焦于空气，空气就被击穿而形成等离子体，同时产生高的砰砰声，并且发出明亮的蓝色闪光(伴随着紫外和X射线辐射）。激光脉冲中每小光子的能量一般约为1电子伏，可是空气中，氮和氧分子的电离势是这个量值的好多倍。至少在造成空气击穿的初始阶段，激光辐射电离原子和分子，应该是许多光子同时被吸收的协同作用。激光生成火球是多光子物理学中的一种现象，它正迅速地发展为原子物理学和激光物理学的主要分支。本文论述这方面的历史和成就，及一些主要的最新发展和应用。     

激光诱导击穿空气等离子体参数的光谱分析法

空气等离子体的电子温度和密度对激光诱导空气击穿等离子体产生闪光过程的研究有着重要的意义,本文将纳秒Nd∶YAG脉冲激光(1064 nm)聚焦于大气中,诱导其产生等离子体闪光,并通过Avantes-ULS3648型9通道的光谱仪采集闪光光谱,通过光谱分析,研究了不同延迟时间下激光诱导击穿空气等离子体产生过程中的等离子体电子温度和电子密度的变化情况。根据同一元素不同峰值位发出的光谱,由相对强度比较法可以得出等离子体电子温度,由斯塔克展宽法可得到等离子体电子密度的变化,通过分析发现,等离子体电子温度和密度均随延迟时间的增大而下降。这些结果对研究强激光作用下空气击穿的气体动力理论机制有一定的科学意义。     

355 nm脉冲激光诱导等离子体开关削波

利用激光诱导等离子体开关技术,对355 nm脉冲激光自削波进行了实验和理论研究。分别采用5种不同焦距的透镜,集中讨论了透镜焦距及激光器输出单脉冲能量对脉宽压缩的影响,发现采用焦距为200 mm的透镜能够获得最佳的脉冲压缩效果。在聚焦透镜焦距200 mm,单脉冲能量160 mJ时,获得最短脉宽3.47 ns;在激光电离Cu小孔内壁表面及空气击穿共同作用下,获得了脉宽最短达2.11 ns的脉冲激光输出。此外,根据实验结果得到了355 nm激光空气击穿阈值,并与理论估算值进行比较,两者结果较为一致。     

超短脉冲激光对生物软组织的等离子体诱导蚀除

详细研究了超短脉冲激光与生物组织相互作用的机理 ,建立了生物软组织中激光诱导光学击穿模型 ;结果表明 ,对于纳秒或亚纳秒脉冲激光 ,强吸收介质的热电子发射对电子雪崩电离过程有很大影响 ,等离子体光学击穿阈值随生物组织吸收的增加而降低 ;在激光脉宽为亚皮秒量级时 ,多光子电离成为光学击穿的主要机制 ,介质的击穿阈值几乎与线性吸收系数无关     

超短脉冲激光与生物软组织相互作用机理研究

详细研究了超短脉冲激光与生物组织相互作用的机理,建立了生物软组织中激光诱导光学击穿模型;结果表明,对于纳秒或亚纳秒脉冲激光,强吸收介质的热电子发射对电子雪崩电离过程有很大影响,等离子体光学击穿阈值随生物组织吸收的增加而降低;在激光脉宽为亚皮秒量级时,多光子电离成为光学击穿的主要机制,介质的击穿阈值几乎与线性吸收系数无关.     

超快激光与生物含水组织相互作用

研究了超快脉冲激光与生物组织相互作用的机理 ,建立了生物软组织中激光诱导光学击穿模型 ;结果表明 ,对于纳秒或亚纳秒脉冲激光 ,强吸收介质的热电子发射对电子雪崩电离过程有很大影响 ,等离子体光学击穿阈值随生物组织吸收的增加而降低 ;在激光脉宽为亚皮秒量级时 ,多光子电离成为光学击穿的主要机制 ,介质的击穿阈值几乎与线性吸收系数无关。在达到光学击穿阈值时 ,激光能量沉积在厚度约 1μm的薄层之内 ;随着激光能量显著超过击穿阈值 ,有效的激光透过深度减小。     

脉冲激光导致水光学击穿阈值计算的简化模型

通过对自由电子密度速率方程的简化,得到了计算光学击穿阂值的解析式。将计算结果与波长分别在可见光和近红外波段,脉宽分别为纳秒、皮秒和飞秒的激光脉冲在纯净水和含有杂质的水中实验测量的击穿阈值做了比较,吻合较好。对于纳秒激光脉冲。在纯净水中多光子电离提供初始电子,随后雪崩电离很快在电离的过程中占主导地位。对于短脉冲,多光子电离作用显得尤为重要,并且在击穿的过程中复合损失和碰撞损失对击穿阈值的影响逐渐消失。     

纳秒紫外激光空气电离及等离子体导电实验研究

为了验证纳秒紫外激光大气等离子体通道技术的可行性,采用实验方法研究了248nm远紫外激光与实验室空气的相互作用,测试了相应的电离击穿阈值;尝试建立了连续的激光等离子体电离通道,并进行了激光等离子体通道直流电传输实验,得到的数据显示,在180m J单脉冲能量作用下,连续闪光柱长度8mm,可导电区长度约20mm。结果表明,纳秒紫外激光建立连续激光等离子体导电通道是可行的。     

预电离效应对ArF准分子激光特性的影响分析

利用流体模型对ArF准分子激光气体放电过程进行了数值模拟,通过对比不同初始预电离强度下的气体放电情况,分析了预电离效应对准分子激光系统放电特性的影响,并探究了不同气体参数下的预电离效果。结果表明,初始预电离强度对于极间击穿电压、ArF准分子的形成以及光输出特性均有显著影响。在保证均匀电场且有效放电的情况下,低的初始预电离强度难以“点燃”气体,但可以获得较高的激光输出能量,而提高初始预电离强度能有效降低击穿电压,却不利于气体对能量的吸收转化。此外,预电离效果受工作气压与F₂比例的影响,气压的升高或F₂浓度的增加,均会降低预电离的有效性。     

A first-order model for computation of laser-induced breakdownthresholds in ocular and aqueous media. I. Theory

An analytic, first-order model has been developed to calculate irradiance thresholds for laser-induced breakdown (LIB) in condensed media, including ocular and aqueous media. The model is derived from the simple rate equation formalism of Shen for cascade breakdown in solids and from the theory of multiphoton ionization in condensed media developed by Keldysh. Analytic expressions have been obtained for the irradiance thresholds corresponding to multiphoton breakdown, to cascade breakdown, and to initiation of cascade breakdown by multiphoton ionization of seed electrons (multiphoton initiation threshold). The model has been incorporated into a computer code and code results compared to experimentally measured irradiance thresholds for breakdown of ocular and aqueous media by nanosecond, picosecond, and femtosecond laser pulses in the visible and near-infrared. The code and comparison of code results to experiment have been documented in part II     

激光等离子体对BK7玻璃的损伤的特征研究

实验研究了ns激光脉冲聚焦到BK7玻璃表面发生电离时玻璃的损伤形貌,并基于激光等离子体的特性对损伤特征进行了分析.研究发现:激光击穿产生的激光等离子体具有高温高压的特性以及较宽的光谱分布,这些特性对脆性BK7玻璃的损伤特性有决定性的影响.激光等离子体发射光谱的波长分布远远小于入射激光的波长,其电离效应大大增强,使玻璃材...     

飞秒激光诱导水光学击穿的椭球体模型

基于飞秒激光脉冲在焦点区域的成形特征和速率方程,通过对自由电子密度速率方程中电子扩散速率和雪崩速率的修正,提出了适用于飞秒激光脉冲诱导水光学击穿的椭球体(ETS)模型.采用四阶朗格-库塔(Runge-Kutta)方法对该模型进行了脉宽为100 fs和300 fs情况下的数值模似.得到了光学击穿阈值以及击穿区域内不同时刻的电子分布,并且预测了焦点区域内不同位置处自由电子随时间的变化趋势.结果表明,用ETS模型计算出的水的击穿阈值较传统模型更好地与实验结果吻合.     

Laser-induced plasma formation in water at nanosecond tofemtosecond time scales: calculation of thresholds, absorptioncoefficients, and energy density

The generation of plasmas in water by high-power laser pulses was investigated for pulse durations between 100 ns and 100 fs on the basis of a rate equation for the free electron density. The rate equation was numerically solved to calculate the evolution of the electron density during the laser pulse and to determine the absorption coefficient and energy density of the plasma. For nanosecond laser pulses, the generation of free electrons in distilled water is initiated by multiphoton ionization but then dominated by cascade ionization. For shorter laser pulses, multiphoton ionization gains ever more importance, and collision and recombination losses during breakdown diminish. The corresponding changes in the evolution of the free carrier density explain the reduction of the energy threshold for breakdown and of the plasma energy density observed with decreasing laser pulse duration. By solving the rate equation, we could also explain the complex pulse duration dependence of plasma transmission found in previous experiments. Good quantitative agreement was found between calculated and measured values for the breakdown threshold, plasma absorption coefficient, and plasma energy density     

Laser-triggered dynamic breakdown of gases and laser-induced prebreakdown signals

Dynamic breakdown of Ne and Ar gases biased to the prebreakdown stage, with and without absorption of very short duration incident N2laser pulses, is studied. Effects of bias and incident laser intensity are seen to be complementary. Laser illumination of the interelectrode gap causes gas breakdown at the cathode to take place at a faster rate and at lower breakdown threshold bias than without the illumination. Breakdown pulse shape varies according to gas composition and bias, and is much different from simple nonbreakdown "prebreakdown" responses to the laser pulses. The prebreakdown signals are attributed to photon-enhanced ionization in the focal volume between the electrodes, while the laser-triggered breakdown pulses are attributed to photon-enhanced excitation and diffusion of such neutral atoms to the high field gradient region near the cathode, where cascade ionization collisional effects are amplified.     

Theory and simulation on the threshold of water breakdown inducedby focused ultrashort laser pulses

A comprehensive model is developed for focused pulse propagation in water. The model incorporates self-focusing, group velocity dispersion, and laser-induced breakdown in which an electron plasma is generated via cascade and multiphoton ionization processes. The laser-induced breakdown is studied first without considering self-focusing to give a breakdown threshold of the light intensity, which compares favorably with existing experimental results. The simple study also yields the threshold dependence on pulse duration and input spot size, thus providing a framework to view the results of numerical simulations of the full model. The simulations establish the breakdown threshold in input power and reveal qualitatively different behavior for picoand femto-second pulses. For longer pulses, the cascade process provides the breakdown mechanism, while for shorter pulses the cooperation between the self-focusing and the multiphoton plasma generation dominates the breakdown threshold     

Femtosecond ultraviolet laser pulse induced lightning discharges ingases

Ultraviolet pulses of 200 fs duration and low energy (≈0.2 mJ) have a sufficiently high peak power to ionize oxygen and nitrogen by three- and four-photon ionization, respectively. It is shown that the resultant ionization channel induces a lightning like discharge at half of the natural self-breakdown voltage in nitrogen or air. The laser triggered discharging process is studied by monitoring the voltage between two planar electrodes. The effects of oxygen on the induced breakdown is investigated. A complete theoretical model is presented to simulate: (1) the electron seeding; and (2) the evolution of the plasma of electron-ion in the applied field. The results of the theory verified by small scale experiments-are used to simulate the process of laser triggered lightning in atmosphere, and helps to define the parameters of a laser system for lightning protection