Evidence of turbulence in laser-induced plasmas

By focusing a pulsed single mode Nd:YAG laser, we created low temperature plasmas at various pressures with various target gases and collected spectral light emissions to investigate the possibility of turbulent behavior in these types of plasmas. Characteristic fluctuation frequencies, chaotic dimensions, spectral indices, and turbulent fluctuation energies are determined from fluctuations in these spectral light emissions. Values calculated for the spectral index and the chaotic index for each plasma event are found to be within the known values for other turbulent plasma systems. Thus, turbulent fluctuations on a nanosecond time scale are confirmed in the time evolutions of various singly ionized and neutral spectral lines of various gases