Photonic Doppler velocimetry of laser-ablated ultrathin metals.

Obtaining velocity information from the interaction of a laser pulse on a metal layer provides insight into the rapid dynamics of material removal and plasma plume physics during ablation. A traditional approach involves using a velocity interferometer system for any reflector (VISAR) on a reflective metal surface. However, when the target is a thin metal layer, the cohesion of the surface is quickly lost resulting in a large spread of particle velocities that cannot be easily resolved by VISAR. This is due to material ejection"confusing" the VISAR measurement surface, effectively washing out the spatial fringe visibility in the VISAR interferometer. A new heterodyne-based optical velocimeter method is the photonic Doppler velocimeter (PDV). Because PDV tracks motion in a frequency encoded temporal electro-optical signal, velocity information is preserved and allows for multiple velocity components to be recorded simultaneously. The challenge lies in extracting PDV velocity information at short (nanosecond) laser ablation time scales with rapidly varying heterodyne beats by using electronic, optical, and analytical techniques to recover the velocity information from a fleeting signal. Here we show how we have been able to obtain velocity information on the nanosecond time scale and are able to compare it to hydrodynamic simulations. Also, we examine refinements to our PDV system by increasing the bandwidth, utilizing different probes, and sampling different analysis techniques.