Shock-induced Electronic Excitations

If this argument appears to show that electronic excitations are irrelevant to LVI or shock initiation of solids, think again. A series of observations dating back to the Renaissance [99] shows that the simple theory of thermoelectronic excitation in fluids does not explain an important process in solids, termed 

1 to 100 pm), but each finite-volume element has to seamlessly incorporate nanoscale quantum mechanical molecular properties needed to properly describe electronic excitation and field ionization. More effort along these lines coupled with well-characterized experiments is needed. 

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The laser-induced breakdowns are caused by three consequent mechanisms [22] (i) tiie excitation of electrons in tiie conduction band by impact and multiphoton ionization (MPI), (ii) radiation-induced heating of tiie conduction-band electrons, and (iii) transfer of the plasma energy to the lattice. The key benefit of ultia-short femtosecond laser pulses lies in their ability to deposit energy in materials in a very short time interval. Heat diffusion is frozen during the interaction and the shock-like energy deposition leads to ablation for ultra-short pulses. This is because tiie pulse... 

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