Concepedia

Abstract

Abstract The impact of intense ultra short laser pulses on solid surface ‐ as in laser ablation ‐ results in a transient perturbation of the material to a state far from equilibrium. Due to ultrafast relaxation of the transient disorder in a few picoseconds, self‐organized surface patterns occur, with a typical feature size at the order of 100 nm or less, similar as observed in ion sputtering and explained by non‐linear dynamics models. The feature size of these structures is determined by the deposited energy dose, their shape and orientation crucially depends on the state of polarization of the incident light. (© 2009 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)