We present two-dimensional measurements of the
laser-induced plasma development and shock wave evolution
in air. The breakdown is induced by a Q-switched
Nd:YAG laser ( = 1064 nm) with a pulse duration of 4 ns.
To study these fast laser-induced phenomena, we have developed
a high-speed, two frame shadowgraph method. It
enables 2D visualization of a laser-induced event in two time
instances, which are delayed by an arbitrary time interval
in the range from 300 ps to 30 ns. The established method
is based on 30 ps, green ( = 532 nm), and linearly polarized
laser pulse, which is split into two orthogonally polarized
illumination pulses for direct and delayed illumination
of the breakdown area. Exploiting polarization of the probe
pulses, we capture two temporally and spatially separated
frames with two CCD cameras. Special attention is given to
the subsequent data processing, especially to the minimization
of the systematic error due to alignment of both images,
and to the determination of 2D velocity distribution from the
captured image pairs.
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