Abstract

The discovery that neutral excited-state atoms were desorbed by UV photons with orders of magnitude greater efficiency than ions from alkali-halide surfaces has wrought a fundamental change in our approach to the study of photon-surface interactions, both with synchrotron and laser light sources. In particular, laser-surface interactions in general and laser-induced material damage in particular—once considered primarily due to the absorption of thermal energy from the incident photons—now appear to be linked to electronic interactions both at the surface and in the near-surface bulk, even for photon energies below the bulk band gap. Thus it is appropriate to consider even laser-surface interactions as generically related to the process of desorption induced by electronic transitions (DIETs), a class of energy-surface interactions triggered in exemplary fashion by photons and electrons.

© 1987 Optical Society of America