Self-Induced Decay of Intense Laser Pulse into a Pair of Surface Plasmons
Optics
2022-09-14 v1 Other Condensed Matter
Plasma Physics
Abstract
We show theoretically that an intense femtosecond optical pulse incident normally on a metal surface tends to decay into a pair of counter-propagating surface plasmon-polaritons (SPPs). The interference field heats the medium periodically, which causes a periodic permittivity perturbation and resonantly amplifies the magnitudes of SPPs. The instability growth time is only 10-50 fs for typical metals at damaging laser fluences. This mechanism is promising for the interpretation of laser-induced periodic surface structures formation in a single-pulse pumping regime.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2203.16570,
title = {Self-Induced Decay of Intense Laser Pulse into a Pair of Surface Plasmons},
author = {Ivan Oladyshkin},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.16570},
year = {2022}
}