Investigation of Nd:YAG laser produced tin droplet plasma expansion

The present work reports an investigation of plasma expansion produced by Nd:YAG laser irradiating tin droplets. An intensified charged coupled device camera was used to record the plasma plume images, and the temporal evolution of the plasma plume was studied at various laser intensities. Our results demonstrate that the shape of the plasma plume develops from an approximate circle to an ellipse. The temporal evolutions of plasma boundary and plasma centroid were calculated by the secondary moment of plasma image intensity. The angle distributions of the plasma expanding velocity were obtained; the results show that the plasma expanding velocity decreases with increase of the angle to the incoming laser axis. In addition, the eccentricity of the plasma ellipse decreases with time. Meanwhile, we found that the centroid of plasma clusters moves toward the laser incoming direction during the expansion stage and the velocity of this motion is independent of laser intensity.