ON THE STABILITY OF METAL EVAPORATION PRODUCED BY AN ULTRASHORT LASER-PULSE

The growth of corrugation perturbations of a plane phase boundary betw een a metal and its vapor is considered in the case of nonstationary m etal evaporation caused by ultrashort laser pulse absorption. It is sh own, that the number of e-foldings of the perturbation is less than un ity, i.e., the phase boundary is stable. This result is in agreement w ith recent experiments on picosecond metal ablation. (C) 1995 American Institute of Physics.