KINETICS OF HEATING AND OPTICAL BREAKDOWN OF THIN FILMS WITH SPATIALLY HOMOGENEOUS ABSORPTION UNDER INTENSE OPTICAL RADIATION.

The heating of a thin weakly absorbing film on a transparent substrate by intense light fluxes is theoretically analyzed. The calculation is made within the framework of the thermal instability formalism, in which the temperature dpeendence of the film absorption coefficient is taken into account. Simple analytic expressions are obtained for the thermal kinetics of the film, the optical breakdown threshold, and the breakdown induction time. A comparison of the results of the theoretical analysis with published experimental data for the breakdown of titanium dioxide films confirms the applicability of the resulting theory.