Investigation into the absorptivity change in metals with increased laser power

At a first glance the low absorptivity of metals in the infrared (IR) makes the use of YAG and CO2 lasers in metal processing very inefficient. However industrial inert gas cutting abilities demonstrates that the absorptivity can reach significantly higher levels during the high power laser interaction. An increase which can not be explained by the increase in temperature only. The interaction between laser light and metals is a major physical phenomena in laser material processing. The Drude free electron model or simplifications like the Hagen-Rubens relation has often been used to model the processes.This paper discuss the need to extend the Drude mode taking into account interband transitions and anormal skin effect in order to describe in increase in absorptivity seen at high intensities. The absorption model will be used in a cut front simulation and results are compared with cutting abilities from the Danish industry.