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Abstract

Material ablation and evaporation using pulsed infrared lasers pose promising approaches for matrix-free laser desorption ionization and in laser surgery. For the best results, key parameters such as laser wavelength, pulse duration, and pulse energy need to be carefully adjusted to the application. We characterize the dynamics at the water-air interface induced by a 10 ps infrared laser tuned to the water absorption band at 3  μm, a parameter set facilitating stress confined desorption for typical absorption depths in biological samples and tissue. By driving the ablation faster than nucleation growth, cavitation induced sample damage during the ablation process can be mitigated. The resultant explosive ablation process leads to a shock front expansion and material ejection which we capture using off-axis digital interference microscopy, an interference technique particularly useful for detecting the phase shift caused by transparent objects. It is demonstrated that the method can yield local density information of the observed shock front with a single image acquisition as compared to the usually performed fit of the velocity extracted from several consecutive snapshots. We determine the ablation threshold to be (0.5±0.2) J cm−2 and observe a significant distortion of the central parts of the primary shock wave above approximately 2.5  J cm−2. The differences in plume shape observed for higher fluences are reflected in an analysis based on shock wave theory, which shows a very fast initial expansion.