On the Pulsed Laser Ablation of Metals and Semiconductors

Laser ablation is an incredibly active field, including research in fundamental physics (e.g. non-equilibrium thermodynamics), industrial (e.g. laser peening) and medical (e.g. laser dentistry) applications, and even security and defense applications (e.g. chemical detection and laser lethality). Over such a broad range of applications with varying degrees of precision required, it is often difficult to find unifying trends that allow researchers and practitioners to understand and compare effects across disparate physical regimes. Furthermore, differences in research goals, experimental apparatus, and theoretical approaches create barriers to establishing a broad physical intuition capable of translating results from study to study.