Stochastic simulation of heat flow with application to laser-solid interactions

A general method for calculating time-dependent temperature distributions in materials is described. It treats the energy input and redistribution process as a kinetics problem, and uses the stochastic method for simulating chemical kinetics in order to model heat flow. The algorithm is applied to the particular problem of laser heating of solids. Simulating temperature distributions are compared with conventional calculations and to experimental results for cw-visible laser heating of silicon and pulsed infrared laser heating of silver to demonstrate accuracy over a wide dynamic range of illumination conditions. The results are in agreement within the error limits of theory and experiment, indicating that less well-characterized systems can be treated with confidence. The main advantages of the method are its computational simplicity and extensibility, which should enable very complex systems to be modeled using minimal computational resources.