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K: Fachverband Kurzzeit- und angewandte Laserphysik

K 1: Laser Systems and their Applications I

K 1.2: Vortrag

Montag, 2. März 2026, 12:00–12:15, HS 20

Single-shot time resolved diffractive imaging of ultrafast plasma-dynamics in gold foils — •Tom Böttcher, Maura Münier, Stefan Lochbrunner, Christian Peltz, Thomas Fennel, and Franziska Fennel — University of Rostock, Germany

Resolving the excitation and relaxation dynamics of laser-induced solid-state plasmas is essential for understanding how condensed matter targets respond to intense laser radiation. Knowledge about the influence of laser parameters, such as spatial, temporal, and spectral pulse structure on the plasma dynamics is crucial for tailored laser machining applications.

Here, we present an experimental method to observe plasma dynamics in laser-excited, thin, semi-transparent targets using single-shot pump-probe coherent diffractive imaging. Our targets are 30 nm thin, free-standing gold foils which are excited by a focused femtosecond 800 nm pump pulse. To capture the resulting dynamics, a low-intensity femtosecond 400 nm probe pulse images the excited target, and the resulting diffraction image is captured using a CMOS camera.

Using a phase retrieval algorithm [1], we reconstruct the 2D spatially resolved complex transmission from the diffraction patterns for different time delays of up to 2 ns. This allows us to probe ultrafast excitation processes in the femtosecond-to-picosecond regime, as well as melting and ablation dynamics in the picosecond-to-nanosecond regime.

[1] R. Altenkirch et al, New J. Phys. 26 (2024), 113010

Keywords: Coherent diffractive imaging; Ablation; Phase retrieval; Plasma dynamics; Single shot