ME Seminar - Weak and strong interactions of laser and liquid/gas interface 金风玉露一相逢—激光与液体界面的相互作用

Guest Speaker: Prof. DENG Weiwei 邓巍巍 教授

Department of Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering 
Southern University of Science and Technology

Dr Weiwei Deng is a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech). Prior to joining SUSTech, he was a tenured associate professor at Virginia Tech (2015-2017) and an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida (2010-2015). He is the recipient of National Science Foundation CAREER Award in the United States. He obtained his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Yale University and B.S. from Tsinghua University in China. Dr Deng’s general research interest is the experimental fluid dynamics of liquid jets and droplets.

Lasers can generate rich interactions at the interfaces of jets and droplets. While the optical pressure induced by the refraction of a continuous-wave laser of 1-Watt is as weak as nanonewton, it is sufficient to induce optofluidic resonance in liquid jets with diameters of hundreds of micrometers. Conversely, the ablation of a fluid interface by a nanosecond pulsed laser with megawatt-level peak power involves extreme fluid dynamics processes spanning five orders of magnitude in characteristic timescales. This leads to strong interactions successively manifesting as laser ablation, plasma expansion, interface instability, and fine mist splashing. This talk will present explorations and discoveries by the SUSTech team regarding both weak and strong interactions between lasers and liquid/gas interfaces. The presentation will also briefly introduce the progress of SUSTech's tabletop extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light source.