A comparative study on reflection of nanosecond Nd-YAG laser pulses in ablation of aluminum in air and in vacuum under the same other experimental conditions is performed. We find that, hemispherical total reflectivity of aluminum undergoes a sharp drop at the plasma formation threshold both in the air and in vacuum. The initial large value (0.8) of aluminum reflectivity decreases to a level of about 0.14 and 0.24 for ablation in the air and in vacuum, respectively. These decreased reflectivity values remain virtually unchanged with further increasing laser fluence. The reflectivity drop in the air is observed to be sharper than in vacuum. Our study indicates that the reflectivity drop is predominantly caused by absorption of the laser light in plasma. Nano/micro-structural defects present on practical sample surfaces play the important role in the plasma formation, especially for the ablation in the air, where the plasma formation threshold is found to be by a factor of 3 smaller than in vacuum.

Reflection of nanosecond laser pulses with different wavelengths (1.06 and 0.69 µ m) in ablation of titanium in air is studied experimentally. The laser wavelength effect on reflection is essential at low laser fluence values. However, it becomes negligible for laser fluence values by about an order of magnitude higher than the plasma ignition threshold. We speculate that the disappearance of the wavelength effect is explained by counter-acting processes of the laser light absorption in plasma, which increases with laser wavelength, and absorption in the surface layer, which decreases with increasing laser wavelength.

We report here the efficiency improvement in a fiber Raman laser by splicing to it short pieces of 10000-ppm Yb³⁺-doped fibers. The amplified spontaneous emission produced by the doped fiber started the stimulated Raman scattering earlier than the spontaneous scattering in the 350-m silica-fiber cavity. In the best case, when splicing to the cavity 127 cm of doped fiber, the pump threshold decreased from 2.9 down to 1.27 W, representing a 56% improvement. This power was close to the theoretical minimum of 1.25 W for very long fibers. The second stokes signal (1175 nm) was only present when the doped fibers were inserted. At 4-W pump, the non-doped cavity delivered 2 W of first stokes signal (1117 nm) that represent a 50% efficiency compared to ∼3 W delivered (∼75%) when a 34-cm doped fiber was inserted. This improvement is intended to reduce the cost of fiber Raman lasers because less powerful sources or shorter fibers are necessary to produce more stokes components.