Physical Modeling of Laser-Induced Breakdown of Glass Jaemyoung Lee 1,⋆ , Michael F. Becker 2 , and Taikyeong T. Jeong 2 1 Korea Polytechnic University, 2121 Jungwang Shihung Kyuggi, Korea(ROK) 429-793 lee@kpu.ac.kr 2 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Texas at Austin Abstract. We made a physical model for investigation of laser-induced breakdown of glass. To estimate the laser energy absorption through electron heating, we derive a power transfer rate equation and an electron number density equation for a steady state as a function of temperature and electric field. Numerical simulations using the derived equations show that the laser power absorption dependence of glass on temperature and electric field strength. 1 Introduction Laser ablation has emerged as one of promising techniques for material process- ing such as thin film depositions, nanoparticle fabrications, etc. Laser ablation has proven its advantages in material processing because it does not contami- nates materials during the process. The foundations of laser ablation, however, lie in the old field of laser-material interactions where many materials were irra- diated with high power laser pulses. Therefore, studies about the laser-material interactions have been required to investigate the laser-material interactions. In this paper, we form a physical model to analyze the laser-induced break- down of glass, provide simple equations for numerical analysis using experimental results published from other groups, and show simulation results about energy absorption, electron number density in terms of temperature and electric field using the derived equations. 2 Theoretical Background The interaction between the laser field and free electrons can explain the high power laser breakdown mechanism. Electron avalanche theory [1, 2,3] has been accepted to explain the high power laser breakdown of transparent(wide band gap) solids at both visible and near-infrared wavelengths. This theory assumes that breakdown starts above the critical laser intensity where the energy gain ⋆ Corresponding author. V.N. Alexandrov et al. (Eds.): ICCS 2006, Part I, LNCS 3991, pp. 443–448, 2006. c  Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006