Femtosecond laser ablation of metals and crater formation by phase explosion in the high-fluence regime

This work presents a two-dimensional theoretical model for numerical simulation of femtosecond laser ablation of metals and crater formation, based on the phase explosion mechanism. Parametric studies are carried out to reveal the ablation phenomena with emphasis on the topography formation by a laser pulse. Experiments are also conducted for fs laser ablation of Ni. The results show that the phase explosion model can effectively predict the crater shape as well as the ablation rate in the high-fluence regime where the lattice temperature approaches the spinodal limit.