Enhanced isotope enrichment by time-delayed laser-pulse pumping of ultrafast ablation plumes

Summary from only given. The present work experimentally examines dynamics through optical pumping in order to enhance the separation effect. We studied ablation plumes initiated by one laser pulse and subsequently driven by a second time-delayed pulse. The second pulse is delayed in order to allow the plasma to expand from its original over-dense condition and reach critical-density where more efficient absorption of the second pulse can occur. As a motivation for this work, we observed in previous experiments an interesting charge-state dependence to the enrichment effect, for all elements and laser pulses studied.