Particle acceleration is an important tool in material modification and several other applications. There are multiple techniques to generate and accelerate ion beams. In the current research work, ions emitted from laser induced plasma were accelerated by employing a DC high voltage extraction assembly. The Nd:YAG laser (1064 nm) with 10 mJ energy and 12 ns pulse width was irradiated on Aluminum target. Thomson parabola technique using Solid State Nuclear Track Detector (CR-39) was employed for measurement of ions energy generated from laser induced plasma. In response to a stepwise increase in acceleration potential from 0–10 kV, an evident increase in energy, in the range 627–730 keV, was observed. In order to utilize this facility as an ion source, Aluminum was exposed to these ions. The Optical and AFM micrographs revealed that the damage produced by the ions on Al surfaces, become more prominent with the increase in ion energy. TRIM simulations were performed for the analysis of the damage at the irradiated samples. Changes in the total displacements, target vacancies and replacement collisions, calculated by TRIM simulation, were analyzed for ion irradiations with increasing ion energies.

We present our results on spatio-temporal evolution of laser plasma produced shockwaves (SWs) and hot core plasma (HCP) created by focused second harmonic (532 nm, 7 ns) of Nd-YAG laser in quiescent atmospheric air at f/#10 focusing geometry. Time resolved shadowgraphs imaged with the help of an ICCD camera with 1.5 ns temporal resolution revealed the presence of two co-existing sources simultaneously generating SWs. Each of the two sources independently led to a spherical SW following Sedov-Taylor theory along the laser propagation direction with a maximum velocity of 7.4 km/s and pressure of 57 MPa. While the interaction of SWs from the two sources led to a planar SW in the direction normal to the laser propagation direction. The SW detaches from the HCP and starts expanding into the ambient air at around 3 µs indicating the onset of asymmetric expansion of the HCP along the z-axis. The asymmetric expansion is observed till 10 µs beyond which the SW leaves the field of view followed by a deformation of the irradiated region in the XY-plane due to the penetration of surrounding colder air in to the HCP. The deformation in the XY-plane lasts till 600 µs. The dynamics of rapidly expanding HCP is observed to be analogous to that of cavitation bubble dynamics in fluids.