Listening to laser sparks: a link between Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy, acoustic measurements and crater morphology

Baptiste Chide (1, 2) , Sylvestre Maurice (2) , Naomi Murdoch (1) , Jérémie Lasue (2) , Bruno Bousquet (3) , Xavier Jacob (4) , Agnès Cousin (2) , Olivier Forni (2) , Olivier Gasnault (2) , Pierre-Yves Meslin (2) , Jean-François Fronton (5) , Marti Bassas-Portús (1) , Alexandre Cadu (1) , Anthony Sournac (1) , David Mimoun (1) , Roger C. Wiens (6)

1 DEOS - Département Electronique, Optronique et Signal
2 IRAP - Institut de recherche en astrophysique et planétologie
3 CELIA - Centre d'Etudes Lasers Intenses et Applications
4 IMFT - Institut de mécanique des fluides de Toulouse
5 CNES - Centre National d'Études Spatiales [Toulouse]
6 LANL - Los Alamos National Laboratory

In preparation for the SuperCam/Mars Microphone scientific investigation, the acoustic signal associated with the plasma formation during Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) experiment is studied with regard to the shot-to-shot evolution of the laser induced crater morphology and plasma emission lines. A set of geological targets are depth profiled using a specifically designed LIBS setup coupled with acoustic test bench under ambient terrestrial atmosphere. Experiments confirm that the decrease of the acoustic energy as a function of the number of shots is well correlated with the target hardness/density and also demonstrate that the acoustic energy can be used as a remote tracer of the ablated volume of the target. Listening to LIBS sparks provides a new information relative to the ablation process that is independent from the LIBS spectrum.

Mots clés: SuperCam; Mars Microphone; LIBS; Acoustic; Shock-waves- Depth profile; Crater morphology; Ablated volume

Domaines: Chimie analytique; Optique / photonique; Acoustique [physics.class-ph]; Instrumentation et méthodes pour l'astrophysique [astro-ph.IM]

Baptiste Chide, Sylvestre Maurice, Naomi Murdoch, Jérémie Lasue, Bruno Bousquet, et al.. Listening to laser sparks: a link between Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy, acoustic measurements and crater morphology. Spectrochimica Acta Part B: Atomic Spectroscopy, 2019, 153, pp.50-60. ⟨10.1016/j.sab.2019.01.008⟩. ⟨hal-02028808⟩