Excitational energy transfer enhancing ionization and spatial-temporal evolution of air breakdown with UV laser radiation

This paper examines the role multiphoton excitation of oxygen has on the ionization of nitrogen in laser air breakdown. Plasma is created by focusing a 193 nm ArF excimer laser using an 18 cm focal length lens, producing a cylindrical 540 μm wide spot of intensity 6.5 GW/cm2, well below the classical limit for collisional cascade (CC) breakdown. By spectroscopically monitoring the B Σ2u+ to X Σ2g+ transition at 391.4 nm of N2+ in N2 and O2 mixes, collisions between N2 and metastable O2 states that have undergone 1+1 absorption processes are shown to lower the degree of nonlinearity (i.e., the number of photons involved in the rate limiting multiphoton absorption process) in the ionization of N2. This process is also found to dominate the 2+1 resonant enhanced multiphoton ionization of N2 in air and be the primary source for ionization of N2 to the B Σ2u+ state. Plasma formation and evolution is also examined using a 1.3 cm focal length objective lens creating a 40 μm wide spot of intensity 1.25 TW/cm2, above the classical limit for breakdown. This plasma is imaged with a fast (1.2 ns) gating intensified charge coupled device camera. Early plasma formation is seen to be inhomogeneous in nature, and significant ion density is found to exist up to 20 μs after the laser pulse.