Experimental Research on Characteristics of Impulse Coupling and Plasma Plume Generated by Laser Irradiating Copper Target with Nanosecond Pulsed Laser Propulsion

Abstract

The ejection of the plasma plume produced by laser ablation is an important process for inducing mechanical effects. Therefore, in this paper, the characteristics of the plasma plume are investigated in order to analyze the impulse coupling mechanism with two laser spot diameters, 300 μm and 1100 μm, respectively. The impulse generated by laser irradiating the copper target was measured by the torsion pendulum, and the plasma plume was investigated using fast photography and optical emission spectroscopy. The experimental results show that the optimal laser intensity is independent of the beam spot size. However, when the laser intensity is greater than 2.8 × 109 W/cm2, the impulse coupling coefficient with the small beam spot starts to gradually decrease, while that with the large beam spot tends to saturate. Additionally, the stream-like structure and the semi-ellipsoid structure of the plasma plume were observed, respectively. Furthermore, the electron number density was estimated using the Stark broadening method, and the effect of the plasma plume on the impulse coupling coefficient was discussed. The results provide a technical reference for several applications including orbital debris removal with lasers, laser thrusters, and laser despinning.

Modification of Space Debris Trajectories through Lasers: Dependence of Thermal and Impulse Coupling on Material and Surface Properties

“…Comparison of experimental data on laser-ablative momentum coupling from the literature with 1D-FEM simulation results at the same laser parameters. While pure metals serve as a reference for Al[51] and Cu[52], results for alloys have been taken from[53] for comparison with Fe simulation results (30CrMnSiA steel) and Ti (TC4 alloy), respectively. Whereas the numerical values of the experimental data were provided alongside the paper in the case of[51], underlying numerical data have been extracted from the graphs of[52,53] usingWebPlotDigitizer 4.6 [54].…”

Effect of laser wavelength on ablation propulsion and plasma characteristics with acrylonitrile butadiene styrene target

“…Thereby, it is used to describe the energy utilization efficiency of converting laser energy into the target momentum. Previous researches have shown that the impulse characteristics depended on laser parameters (wavelength, energy, pulse width, and spot size), ambient conditions (gas composition and pressure), target properties, etc [12][13][14][15][16]. Among these factors, laser wavelength has a significant effect on lasertarget coupling, ablation rate, penetration depth, plasma ignition threshold, and plasma absorption [17].…”