
60
Laser-Induced Damage in Optical Materials
with 10 J/cm
2
uence. Fractures are rst initiated near the absorber’s equator, then later
(t = 2 ns) at the free surface, and eventually all material within the conical region shown
in Figure 3.25c is completely crashed and ejected.
Unfortunately, numerical modeling of the damage process initiated by very small
absorbers (≪100 nm), which involves plasma-ball formation, remains a challenge due to
large uncertainties in the material parameters within both the plasma-ball volume and
its immediate vicinity.
To summarize, in the case of a localized absorber near the free surface, damage mor-
phology takes ...