That's how LASIC and PRK work, after all!

Is it this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coulomb_explosion

It's related, but as i recall the reason that short pulses cut better has to do with heat transfer. Most heat transfer in metal is due to the vibration in the electrons, being much lighter than the atomic lattice they move in. Very short pulses, means that the heating in the beam path happens faster, than the electrons can transfer it out to the rest of the metal. In long pulses once the metal is vaporised, a lot of the surrounding material has melted. This molten metal cools into jagged structures and that leaves the edge weird. All this doesn't happen if the pulse is short enough. It vaporises metal before the surrounding structure has a chance to heat up.

Here's a figure showing the quite stark difference. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/SEM-image-of-the-substra...

Awesome, those photos do illustrate the difference really well.

Thanks heaps. :)

Here's a figure comparing the hole left in a metal surface with normal and femto-second pulses. The difference is quite stark.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/SEM-image-of-the-substra...