ON METAL-DIELECTRIC TRANSITION IN LASER ABLATION MODELING

Laser ablation modeling taking into account possibility of metal-dielectric transition in the irradiated metal targets is considered. In the framework of 1-D heat conduction approach it is shown that the steady-state vaporization regime with metal-dielectric transition in mercury can be observed only in very narrow laser intensity interval. From analysis of recent experimental results on mercury ablation with nanosecond laser pulses it follows that the results can not be described in the framework of 1-D approach.