## 3 Results and Discussion  
### Pals  
Due to its high energy, the PALS laser, even with the sample being placed out of the beam focus, is capable of ablating a relatively large volume (mm\({}^{3}\)) of the chondritic meteorite in one single shot of about 500 J, creating, thus, a crater with a diameter of roughly 10 mm and an average depth of about 100 \(\upmu\)m. A sectional view of this ablation crater is shown in Figure 4, panel A, and pictures obtained via optical and electron microscopy and profilometry are depicted in Figure 5. The profilometry also indicates that the ablation craters became significantly deeper with the decreasing size of the beam focus (up to 250 \(\upmu\)m for 1 mm focus and about 500 J for chondritic meteorites). The iron parts of the pallasite Seymchan evinced greater resistance during ablation, and the depth of the craters is, therefore, around 70 \(\upmu\)m for a laser pulse with an energy of about 650 J and a diameter of 1 mm. These ablation craters also show very distinct hillock formations in the center (Figure 4, panel C). So far, the same phenomenon has not been recorded for meteorites, but it has been observed for zinc [74] or silicon [75]. The origin of this effect could be attributed the non-uniform energy deposition (see intensity profile in Figure 4, panel B), the elastic rebound of the lattice, melt flows, or the recoil pressure [75; 76]. For the interaction experiments, the mean values of the ablation plasma excitation and ionization, and the thermodynamic temperature for PALS, were estimated through an examination of the emission spectra at 5100 K, 12,100 K, and 20,000 K, respectively. The electron density of the laser-induced plasma reached the order of 10\({}^{15}\)-10\({}^{16}\) cm\({}^{-3}\). These physical parameters are also summarized in Table 2.  
Figure 3: Spatial-temporal evolution of the plasma radiation obtained via streak camera (**panel A**), together with the depiction of the main longitudinal expansion direction (red vector, **panel B**). The longitudinal expansion velocities of the ablation plasma within 5 ns after the laser pulse were studied using a streak camera. The measured values are very strongly affected by the set parameters of the streak camera--the streak range, the sweep rate, and the time resolution, which must be set in accordance with the expected expansion velocity. The velocities obtained during the PALS laser experiments are listed in Table 3, along with the camera settings. The obtained results range from approximately 400 km/s to 1000 km/s. These values are in accordance with findings of other experimental observations [72; 73], and represent the expansion of an early-stage plasma constituted predominantly by electrons. Given the fact that the experiments were conducted under vacuum (\(\sim\)10\({}^{-2}\) mbar), the electrons originated primarily from the target material. By comparing the values across all samples, no clear dependence of the velocities on the laser fluence was discovered. Within individual samples, similar expansion velocities for comparable fluences can be found (e.g., NWA 12269 experiments nr. 49-52). However, there are also relatively significant differences among the obtained values for individual meteorites. Nonetheless, considering the nonhomogenous structure of the meteorite samples and their non-ideal polished surfaces containing micro cracks and holes, such an outcome is to be expected, and further supports the assumption of the strong dependence of the velocity on the aforementioned experimental factors. For each ablated specimen, every shot was focused on a different place of the meteorite sample, which, given the grainy mineralogical structure of meteorites, resulted in differences in the overall chemical composition and surface characteristics of the ablated material. Figure 4: Profile of the PALS ablation crater on the chondritic meteorite NWA 8212 created by a single shot of about 500 J. The beam focal spot was approximately 10 mm in diameter (**panel A**).