A modeling approach for calculating the expansion of a laser-generated plasma into a background gas has been developed. Although relatively simple in structure, the model gives excellent fits to various experimental data for Si in background gases of He and Ar, including the previously unexplained “splitting” of the ablated plume. The model is based on a combination of multiple-scattering and hydrodynamic approaches. It allows the plume to be broken up into components, or scattering orders, whose particles undergo 0, 1, 2,… collisions with the background. Particles can only be transferred from one order to the next higher order by collisions. The densities in the individual orders propagate according to the usual conservation equations to give the overall plume expansion. When Ar is the background gas, there is a non-negligible probability that Si plume atoms will reach the detector without undergoing any collisions. This gives rise to a flux component that is undisplaced from that obtained when no background gas is present in addition to the delayed peak from the scattered flux. In Ar only a few orders are necessary for convergence. The behavior in the light gas He is more complex because of the relatively small effect of any one-scattering event and the calculations must be carried out in some cases to as high as the 12th scattering order to find agreement with the experiments.

• Received 7 November 1997

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.58.1533