Convoluted effect of laser fluence and pulse duration on the property of a nanosecond laser-induced plasma into an argon ambient gas at the atmospheric pressure

We studied the behavior of the plasma induced by a nanosecond infrared (1064 nm) laser pulse on a metallic target (Al) during its propagation into argon ambient gas at the atmospheric pressure and especially over the delay interval ranging from several hundred nanoseconds to several microseconds. In such interval, the plasma is particularly interesting as a spectroscopic emission source for laser-induced plasma spectroscopy (LIBS). We show a convoluted effect between laser fluence and pulse duration on the structure and the emission property of the plasma. With a relatively high fluence of about 160 J/cm(2) where a strong plasma shielding effect is observed, a short pulse of about 4 ns duration is shown to be significantly more efficient to excite the optical emission from the ablation vapor than a long pulse of about 25 ns duration. While with a lower fluence of about 65 J/cm(2), a significantly more efficient excitation is observed with the long pulse. We interpret our observations by considering the post-ablation interaction between the generated plume and the tailing part of the laser pulse. We demonstrate that the ionization of the layer of ambient gas surrounding the ablation vapor plays an important role in plasma shielding. Such ionization is the consequence of laser-supported absorption wave and directly dependent on the laser fluence and the pulse duration. Further observations of the structure of the generated plume in its early stage of expansion support our explanations. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4772787]