Derivation of effective penetration depth of femtosecond laser pulses in metal from ablation rate dependence on laser fluence, incidence angle, and polarization

Ablation rate dependence on laser fluence for copper subjected to oblique femtosecond laser irradiation has been determined experimentally in order to investigate processing induced by oblique irradiation. A difference of ablation rate between p-polarized and s-polarized oblique irradiation is clearly observed. Effective penetration depth is defined to explain the ablation rate dependence instead of using optical penetration depth, which is treated as a key value for determining the ablation rate in conventional theory. The effective penetration depth for copper is presented in simple formulas as a function of laser incidence angle for each polarization. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.