Early-stage effects of residual charges in a metal target on emitted electrons induced by femtosecond laser-metal interactions

Electron emissions from a metal target surface may be induced due to the irradiation of the target by a femtosecond (fs) laser pulse. The emitted electrons will leave behind residual charges (which are positive) in the metal target near its surface. The residual charges may affect the evolution of the emitted electrons, which is called the “residual charge effect”. An intuitive belief could be that the residual charge effect is insignificant, because the huge number of free electrons in the interior region of the metal may quickly neutralize the residual charges. In this paper, the early-stage (at a time scale of less than ∼1 picosecond) residual charge effect has been investigated. The study shows that contrary to the above intuitive belief, the early-stage residual charge effect is very significant under the studied conditions, which has greatly slowed down the expansion of emitted electrons and enhanced their recombination back into the surface of the target. The study implies that to accurately study the early-stage fs laser-induced electron emission and other closely related processes, the residual charge effect should not be neglected.