Interference Diagnosis of Laser Induced Vapor Plume

Characterizations of the vapor plume from LY12 aluminum target irradiated by a focused normal mode pulsed Nd: glass laser beam have been studied by using of a plate shearing interferometer and the high speed photography. The frame photos show that the speed of shock wave in the air is bout 473 m/s, the vapor plume front is about 162 m/s. By using the Abel inversion and Saha equations to analyze the interferogram of the vapor plume, based on electron density is deduced to be about 3.11017 cm-1, the temperature about 6 096 K, iconicity about 0.014, and optic absorption about 0.03 cm-1.