Electron emission from a double-layer metal under femtosecond laser irradiation

In this paper we theoretically investigate electron emission during femtosecond laser ablation of single-layer metal (copper) and double-layer structures. The double-layer structure is composed of a surface layer (copper) and a substrate layer (gold or chromium). The calculated results indicate that the double-layer structure brings a change to the electron emission from the copper surface. Compared with the ablation of a single-layer, a double-layer structure may be helpful to decrease the relaxation time of the electron temperature, and optimize the electron emission by diminishing the tailing phenomenon under the same absorbed laser fluence. With the increase of the absorbed laser fluence, the effect of optimization becomes significant. This study provides a way to optimize the electron emission which can be beneficial to generate laser induced ultrafast electron pulse sources.