Polarization resolved laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy of Al.

It is shown that the continuous background of the laser-induced breakdown spectrum of Al produced by 800 nm femtosecond pulses is strongly polarized. Use of a polarizer to filter out the background significantly improves the signal/noise and signal/background ratios of the discrete line spectrum. The effects of the laser pulse energy, focal position, incidence and detection angles, and the polarization plane of the laser were investigated. Polarization resolved laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (PRLIBS) is much less sensitive to these variables than conventional, ungated fs-LIBS, making this a much more versatile analytical tool. These measurements reveal qualitatively different mechanisms for the continuous and discrete parts of the spectrum.