An overview is presented of experimental and theoretical research in the field of physics and engineering of singlet delta oxygen (SDO) production in low-temperature plasma of various electric discharges. Attention is paid mainly to the SDO production with SDO yield adequate for the development of an electric discharge oxygen–iodine laser (DOIL). The review comprises a historical sketch describing the main experimental results on SDO physics in low-temperature plasma obtained since the first detection of SDO in electric discharge in the 1950s and the first attempt to launch a DOIL in the 1970s up to the mid-1980s when several research groups started their activity aimed at DOIL development, stimulated by success in the development of a chemical oxygen–iodine laser (COIL). A detailed analysis of theoretical and experimental research on SDO production in electric discharge from the mid-1980s to the present, when the first DOIL has been launched, is given. Different kinetic models of oxygen low-temperature plasma are compared with the model developed by the authors. The latter comprises electron kinetics based on the accompanying solution of the electron Boltzmann equation, plasma chemistry including reactions of excited molecules and numerous ion–molecular reactions, thermal energy balance and electric circuit equation. The experimental part of the overview is focused on the experimental methods of SDO detection including experiments on the measurements of the Einstein coefficient for SDO transition and experimental procedures of SDO production in self-sustained and non-self-sustained discharges and analysis of different plasma-chemical processes occurring in oxygen low-temperature plasma which brings limitation to the maximum SDO yield and to the lifetime of the SDO in an electric discharge and its afterglow. Quite recently obtained results on gain and output characteristics of DOIL and some projects aimed at the development of high-power DOIL are discussed.

The possibility of obtaining a high specific input energy in an electron-beam sustained discharge ignited in oxygen gas mixtures O 2 : Ar : CO (or H 2) at the total gas pressures of 10-100 Torr was experimentally demonstrated. The specific input energy per molecular component exceeded ∼6 kJ l −1 atm −1 (150 kJ mol −1) as a small amount of carbon monoxide was added into a gas mixture of oxygen and argon. It was theoretically demonstrated that one might expect to obtain a singlet delta oxygen yield of 25% exceeding its threshold value needed for an oxygen-iodine laser operation at room temperature, when maintaining a non-self-sustained discharge in oxygen gas mixtures with molecular additives CO, H 2 or D 2. The efficiency of singlet delta oxygen production can be as high as 40%.

In this work the formation of laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) on a titanium surface upon irradiation by linearly polarized femtosecond (fs) laser pulses with a repetition rate of 1 kHz in air environment was studied experimentally. In particular, the dependence of high-spatial-frequency-LIPSS (HSFL) characteristics on various laser parameters: fluence, pulse number, wavelength (800 nm and 400 nm), pulse duration (10 fs - 550 fs), and polarization was studied in detail. In comparison with low-spatial-frequency-LIPSS (LSFL), the HSFL emerge at a much lower fluence with orientation perpendicular to the ridges of the LSFL. It was observed that these two types of LIPSS demonstrate different fluence, shot number and wavelength dependencies, which suggest their origin is different. Therefore, the HSFL formation mechanism cannot be described by the widely accepted interference model developed for describing LSFL formation.

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Nanoscale thermally assisted hydrodynamic melt perturbations induced by ultrafast laser energy deposition in noble-metal films produce irreversible nanoscale translative mass redistributions and results in formation of radially-symmetric frozen surface structures. We demonstrate that the final three-dimensional (3D) shape of the surface structures formed after re-solidification of the molten part of the film is governed by incident laser fluence and, more importantly, predicted theoretically via molecular dynamics modeling. Considering the underlying physical processes associated with laser-induced energy absorption, electron-ion energy exchange, acoustic relaxation and hydrodynamic flows, the theoretical approach separating "slow" and "fast" physical processes and combining hybrid analytical two-temperature calculations, scalable molecular-dynamics simulations, and a semi-analytical thin-shell model was shown to provide accurate prediction of the final nanoscale solidified morphologies, fully consistent with direct electron-microscopy visualization of nanoscale focused ion-beam cuts of the surface structures produced at different incident laser fluences. Finally, these results are in reasonable quantitative agreement with mass distribution profiles across the surface nanostructures, provided by their noninvasive and non-destructive nanoscale characterization based on energy-dispersive x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, operating at variable electron-beam energies.

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