CHARACTERIZATION OF LUMINOUS BEAMS FROM LASER-ABLATION BY IMAGING TECHNIQUES

Atomic and molecular species in excited electronic states from laser a blation processes are best studied by two-dimensional imaging techniqu es. For a prototypical, cylindrically symmetric image pattern, an inve rse Abel transform is executed to reconstruct the three-dimensional nu mber density distribution of luminous beams. Quantitative information on the average velocity and the spatial profile of laser-ablated speci es can be extracted from their spectrally and time-resolved image fram es.