Diagnostic Study of an Fe-Ni Alloy Plasma Generated by the Fundamental (1064 nm) and Second (532 nm) Harmonics of an Nd: YAG Laser

We studied the spatial evolution of the Fe-Ni plasma generated by the fundamental (1064 nm) and second (532 nm) harmonics of a Q-switched Nd: YAG laser. The experimentally observed line profiles of the neutral iron (Fe I) have been used to extract the plasma temperature (T_e) using the Boltzmann plot method, whereas the electron number density (N_e) has been deter- mined from the Stark broadening. In addition, we studied the spatial behavior of T_e and Ne with the variation of laser energy for iron plasma by placing the target material (iron-nickel alloy) in air at atmospheric pressure for both modes of the Nd: YAG laser.