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A laser ablation plasma formation process was investigated by shooting another laser beam. The initial plasma was created by a mildly focused nanosecond laser beam and the probe laser, which has about ten times shorter pulse length with tightly focussed condition, was irradiated on it. By analysing high temperature plasma created by the probe laser, we could detect an interaction between the initial low temperature plasma and the probe laser. The interaction caused that the velocity of high temperature plasma generated by the sub-ns laser became smaller and the amount of the highly charged ions decreased. We found that the interaction does not occur during the irradiation of the first half of the ns laser. This fact indicates that the plasma is not produced during the first half of the ns laser.

Laser-generated non-equilibrium plasmas were analyzed at Brookhaven National Laboratory (NY, USA) and MIFT Messina University (Italy). Two laser intensities of 1012 W/cm2 and 109 W/cm2, have been employed to irradiate Al and Al with Au coating targets in high vacuum conditions. Ion energy distributions were obtained using electrostatic analyzers coupled with ion collectors. Time of flight measurements were performed by changing the laser irradiation conditions. The study was carried out to provide optimum keV ions injection into post acceleration systems. Possible applications will be presented.