Characterization of plasmas driven by laser wavelengths in the 1.064-10.6 $\mu$m range as future extreme ultraviolet light sources

Abstract

We characterize the properties of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light source plasmas driven by laser wavelengths in the ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{laser}}=1.064-10.6$ $\mu$m range. Detailed numerical simulations of laser-irradiated spherical tin microdroplet targets reveal a strong laser-wavelength dependence on laser light absorptivity and the conversion efficiency of generating EUV radiation. Radiative losses are found to dominate the power balance for all laser wavelengths, and a clear shift from kinetic to in-band radiative losses with increasing laser wavelength is identified. We find that the existence of maximum conversion efficiency, near ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{laser}}=4$ $\mu$m, originates from the interplay between the optical depths of the laser light and the in-band EUV photons for this specific target geometry.

References in corpus (3)

• Power-law scaling of plasma pressure on laser-ablated tin microdroplets
• Characterization of angularly resolved EUV emission from 2-$\mu$m-wavelength laser-driven Sn plasmas using preformed liquid disk targets
• Characterization of 1- and 2-$\mu$m-wavelength laser-produced microdroplet-tin plasma for generating extreme-ultraviolet light