Meteor luminosity simulation through laser ablation of meteorites

Light production mechanisms during ablation of meteors in planetary atmospheres are still not well understood. We have used a high-power pulsed (15 mJ per 10-ns pulse) Nd:YAG laser, frequency-doubled to 532-nm wavelength, to heat chondritic meteorite samples rapidly, and then used CCD imaging and spectral cameras to search for light produced by the rapidly heated meteorite vapour. We report here that light is produced by the rapidly heated and expanding ablated material without the need for collision with a high-speed atomic beam. The light production region is of the order of 2 mm in diameter. The light produced is a combination of either continuum or unresolved spectral line emission, along with spectral emission lines of Ca, Fe, Na, N, Mg, Si and O, with spectra from both neutral and singly ionized species. We have used a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to characterize the size of the ablated region (approximately 160 mu m wide and 170 mu m deep). The SEM, equipped with energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, was also used to perform elemental analysis of our sample, which confirmed the presence of the identified elements in the original meteorite. The current experiments were done at room temperature and pressure, with mean power input rates that would correspond to low atmospheric penetration of meteorites. While others have used similar techniques for remote identification of elements present on surfaces in space and in meteorites, to our knowledge this is the first paper to propose laser ablation as a means of studying light production in modest-sized meteors.