Optical Diagnostics Of Colliding Laser Produced Plasmas

Recently prepulse techniques such as dual-pulse laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (DP-LIBS) have emerged as commonly used analytical techniques for qualitative and quantitative elemental investigations in various research fields and disciplines such as industrial, defense and medical applications. The performance of the DP-LIBS technique is strongly dependent on the choice of the experimental conditions. The key parameters that affect its performance are the target properties, laser wavelength, pulse duration, energy and spot-size, interpulse delay times, delay time of observations, ambient background gas pressure and geometrical setup of the optics. The DP-LIBS approach provides significant enhancement in the intensities of emission lines and their lifetimes, up to two orders of magnitude greater than conventional single pulse laser induced breakdown spectroscopy. The aim of the work presented here is to further advance prepulse techniques, as well as other methods to control species density, with a view to optimise emission in the visible wavelength range. In particular, a new technique involving reheating the stagnation layer formed at the collision front between two (or more) colliding plasmas is explored. Spatially and temporally resolved imaging and spectroscopy of the interaction region between two colliding plasmas are employed to demonstrate for the first time that pumping of an optimised stagnation layer significantly increases the intensity emission and duration of selected spectral lines. This technique offers the promise of tunable density and tunable energy (temperature) plasmas. It will potentially increase both the lifetimes and intensities of spectral lines in laser produced plasmas by creating relatively low density - high energy plasmas which can overcome the problem of flux loss due to opacity, which leads to the attenuation of discrete emission lines with a concomitant reduction in line contrast, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and signal-to-background ratio (SBR). The latter is a key parameter in determining the limit-of-detection (LOD) of the LIBS technique. Other applications of stagnation layers include the development of 'target fuel' for Extreme UltraViolet (EUV) and X-ray light sources with an especial emphasis on generating high repetition rate, preheated droplet-like targets that can compete with the current liquid drop targets. The latter suffer from clogging at the jet nozzle due to adiabatic expansion freezing. Also, unlike stagnation layers the basic parameters of the droplet fuel cannot be easily varied in the way that stagnation layers allow.