Schlieren imaging investigation of successive laser-induced breakdowns in atmospheric-pressure air

Fast Schlieren imaging was performed to visualize the interactions between previously produced laser breakdown and a subsequent laser pulse. A pair of laser pulses was used to generate successive breakdowns in the quiescent standard air, and the interval between the pulses was varied from 50 ns to 100 μs to experimentally simulate various laser repetition rates. The incident laser energies ranged from 5 mJ to 31 mJ, and the energy absorbed by the breakdown of the second laser pulse was quantified by measuring the energies before and after the breakdown. The results indicate that the second laser pulse coupled to the background gas and produced a second laser breakdown only when the pulse interval was shorter than 250 ns or longer than 15 μs. For the shorter pulse intervals, the second breakdown occurred at the edge of the first breakdown region along the laser beam path, and its effect on the perturbation of the density field was found to be small. On the other hand, for the longer pulse intervals, the second breakdown occurred at the lens focal point, and the density field perturbations caused by the first and second breakdowns seemed to interact with each other inducing the Richtmyer-Mechkov instability. As a result, more significant turbulence in the density field was observed after successive laser pulse breakdowns than was observed following a single breakdown.