Angular distributions of emitted particles by laser ablation of silver at 355 nm

The angular distribution of laser ablated silver in vacuum has been measured in situ with an array of quartz-crystal microbalances. The silver surface was irradiated by ns pulses from a Nd:YAG laser operating at 355 nm for fluences ranging from 0.7 J/cm(2) to 8 J/cm(2). The distribution is strongly peaked in the forward direction corresponding to cos(p) 8, where p varies from 5 to 12 for the largest beam spot, but is less peaked for the smallest beam spots. The total collected yield of ablated atoms is about 2 x 10(15) Ag atoms per pulse for the highest pulse energies.