Laser damage in silicon: energy absorption, relaxation and transport

Silicon irradiated with an ultrashort 800 nm-laser pulse is studied theoretically using a two temperature description that considers the transient free carrier density during and after irradiation. A Drude model is implemented to account for the highly transient optical parameters. We analyze the importance of considering these density-dependent parameters as well as the choice of the Drude collision frequency. In addition, degeneracy and transport effects are investigated. The importance of each of these processes for resulting calculated damage thresholds is studied.We report damage thresholds calculations that are in very good agreement with experimental results over a wide range of pulse durations.