Study of opto-mechanical characteristics of interaction of ultrashort laser pulses with polymer materials

The opto-mechanical characteristics, such as the specific mechanical recoil momentum, the specific impulse, and the energy efficiency, of the laser ablation of flat polymer targets ((C₂F₄) _n , (CH₂O) _n ) have been determined experimentally for the first time for the case of excitation with femtosecond pulses (τ ∼ 45–70 fs) of UV-IR (λ ∼ 266, 400, 800 nm) laser radiation (I ₀ up to 10¹⁵ W/cm²) under normal atmospheric and vacuum (p ∼ 10⁻⁴ mbar) conditions. The efficiency of mechanical recoil momentum generation is analyzed for various regimes of the laser irradiation.