Numerical study of ultrafast optical instability causing structured light absorption in metal.

We present the first-principle numerical study of nonlinear decay of a femtosecond laser pulse into a pair of surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) during reflection from a rough metallic surface. The ultrafast dynamics of the decay was studied at damaging laser fluences of about 1 J/cm, and the principal role of the electronic collision rate growth was proved. The resulting strongly inhomogeneous heating of metal is an important stage of laser-induced phenomena like ablation, terahertz radiation generation, and periodic surface structures formation.