Abstract
The aim of the present work is to evaluate the effect of the laser beam energy on the properties of the plasma generated by focusing an intense laser beam on an Al solid target in air at atmospheric pressure. Plasma is generated using a Brilliant Nd-YAG pulsed laser from Quantel at the fundamental wavelength; its pulse energy is 750 mJ and the pulse duration is 6 ns. The emission spectrum is collected using an echelle spectrometer equipped with an ICCD camera of Andor type. The spectrum is recorded at several delay time intervals from 0 to 10 mu s. Measurements of temperature and electron density of the produced plasmas at different laser energies and at different delay times are performed in the present study.