Characterization of plasma reflectivity response of optical glasses processed by 34 fs pulses: analysis in the context of ablation parameters

Abstract

One of the methods successfully applied for the improvement of the temporal contrast of ultrashort, high-intensity pulses is the plasma mirror (PM) technique [1]. An advantage of this approach is that it can effectively be utilized in the experiments applying strong-field of intensities higher than 10 W/cm with few cycle pulses, nevertheless, a bottleneck is the damage of the target surface due to the concomitant ablation: when working with high repetition rate, high-intensity systems [2] the target will rapidly be consumed, due to the shot-to-shot reduction of the area available. Commercially available, cheap target materials possessing appropriate plasma mirror characteristics, in best case together with the possibility of surface regeneration are needed to operate these systems. In order to allow a proper choice between attainable candidates, substantial knowledge of the response of the materials to the ablating laser pulse in general and the behavior of the transient reflectivity in particular is necessary.