Laser beam interactions with materials

Lasers, having proven useful in such diverse areas as high resolution spectroscopy and the guiding of ferryboats, are cur rently enjoying great popularity among materials scientists and engineers. As versatile sources of „pure“ energy in a highly concentrated form, lasers have become attractive tools and re search instruments in metallurgy, semiconductor technology and engineering. This text treats, from a physicist's point of view, some of the processes that lasers can induce in materials. The field of laser-material interactions is inherently mul tidisciplinary. Upon impact of a laser beam on a material, electromagnetic energy is converted first into electronic exci tation and then into thermal, chemical and mechanical energy. In the whole process the molecular structure as well as the shape of the material are changed in various ways. Understand ing this sequence of events requires knowledge from several branches of physics. A unified presentation of the subject, for the benefit of the materials researcher as well as the advanced student, is attempted here. In order to keep the book reason ably trim, I have focused on laser effects in solids such as thin films and technological materials. Related topiCS not cov ered are laser-induced chemical reactions in gases and liquids and laser effects in organic or biological materials.