Experimental and Theoretical Determination of the Effective Penetration Depth of Ultrafast Laser Radiation in Stainless Steel

This study intends to present a simple two-temperature model (TTM) for the fast calculation of the ablation depth as well as the corresponding effective penetration depth for stainless steel by considering temperature-dependent material parameters. The model is validated by a comparison of the calculated to the experimentally determined ablation depth and the corresponding effective penetration depth in dependence on the pulse duration (200 fs up to 10 ps) and the fluence. The TTM enables to consider the interaction of pulsed laser radiation with the electron system and the subsequent interaction of the electrons with the phonon system. The theoretical results fit very well to the experimental results and enable the understanding of the dependence of the ablation depth and of the effective penetration depth on the pulse duration. Laser radiation with a pulse duration in the femtosecond regime results in larger ablation depths compared to longer-pulsed laser radiation in the picosecond regime. Analogously to the ablation depth, larger effective penetration depths are observed due to considerably higher electron temperatures for laser radiation with pulse durations in the femtosecond regime.

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