Dynamical modeling of laser ablation processes

Several physics and computational approaches have been developed to globally characterize phenomena important for film growth by pulsed laser deposition of materials. These include thermal models of laser-solid target interactions that initiate the vapor plume; plume ionization and heating through laser absorption beyond local thermodynamic equilibrium mechanisms; gas dynamic, hydrodynamic, and collisional descriptions of plume transport; and molecular dynamics models of the interaction of plume particles with the deposition substrate. The complexity of the phenomena involved in the laser ablation process is matched by the diversity of the modeling task, which combines materials science, atomic physics, and plasma physics.