Laser ablation depths in aluminum from ultrafast x-ray diffraction

Aluminum is a commonly used ablator in shock and materials science ex- periments. The laser matter interactions governing the ablation depth of this aluminum are still not well known. We report on an experiment conducted at the LCLS Materials at Extreme Conditions (MEC) beamline at SLAC that used 130 fs x-rays to generate x-ray diffraction patters. This diagnostic was used to directly measure the ablation depths in aluminum for laser energies ranging from 2.5 to 250 mJ corresponding to pressures up to 100GPa. This data is being used to investigate how laser ablation scales with laser energy and to work towards generating a universal scaling law of laser ablation in aluminum.
Prepared by LLNL under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. This work was supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency under Award No. HD- TRA12020001. LLNL-ABS-858752-DRAFT.