A Numerical Simulation Studying for Plasma Expansion in Laser Ablation Processing

A numerical simulation is proposed to study the dynamics expansion characteristics during the material irradiated by a high-intensity laser beam.The ionization effect and the local mass and momentum conservations for plasma expansion are considered in this model. As an example of carbon target, the plasma flow dynamics into a vacuum, like ionization degree, plasma number density and space pressure are studied in detail. The results show the plasma temperature strongly affects the ionization fraction and the ionization effect evidently influences the plasma dynamic expansion behavior. The space pressure of plasma decreases along with the plasma expansion.