Ultrafast Laser-Materials Interactions at Extreme Conditions

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Background

The advent of ultrafast lasers has enabled time-resolved measurements of physical processes in materials at femtosecond temporal resolutions. This time scale allows us to study the behavior of phonons in materials with THz oscillation frequencies. Reinforced by the Chirped Pulse Amplification, a technique that was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018, ultrafast lasers have become sufficiently strong to alter the physical properties of materials over a broad range of parameter spaces, and subsequently drive the materials into intriguing matter states of extreme temperatures and pressures. The understanding of material properties under these conditions are important for a variety of applications ranging from the fundamental research of warm dense matter, the studies of ultrafast thermal and nonthermal melting phenomena, and to various industrial applications of ultrafast material processing such as laser ablation and laser surface processing.

This Research Topic covers both experimental and theoretical effort in understanding the physics of ultrafast laser-materials interactions at extreme conditions. The outstanding problems include but are not limited to:
1. Fundamental understanding of ultrafast laser ablation from solid to plasma transitions.
2. Structural dynamics (electronic and atomic) of warm dense matter.
3. Electron-ion coupling and ion-ion interaction physics at highly non-equilibrium conditions.
4. Thermal and electrical conductivities in strongly excited solids.
5. Ultrafast thermal and nonthermal melting in metals, dielectrics, and semiconductors.

Experimental techniques for studying these problems include: time-resolved optical reflectivity and transmission, frequency-domain interferometry, time-resolved shadowgraphy and imaging, time-resolved electron and X-ray diffraction, and X-ray absorption spectroscopy, to name a few; Theory and simulation tools include but are not limited to: two-temperature model simulations, classical and ab initio molecular dynamics simulations, Monte Carlo simulations, time-dependent density functional theory and other advanced levels of theory.

We sincerely welcome articles that report new and original research that falls into these categories, or articles that review the latest research progress in any of these topics.

Keywords: ultrafast laser-materials interaction, material properties at extreme conditions, warm dense matter, ultrafast melting, laser ablation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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