Dynamics of crater growth and of formation of elastic waves on interaction of a millisecond laser pulse with a surface of a transparent insulator

A study was made of the dynamics of crater growth when a millisecond light pulse with a complex temporal profile interacted with the surface of a transparent insulator. The characteristics of elastic waves generated in the course of this interaction were also studied. The effective growth of a crater was found to last no more than 100 μs and it consisted of two stages. In the first stage the area of the damage region increased while its depth remained practically constant, whereas in the second stage the crater growth was three-dimensional. Under these conditions the generation of acoustic vibrations could be described satisfactorily by a model of a loaded region emitting a wave into an elastic medium.