Paper 6.4: N. Bloembergen, “Laser-induced electric breakdown in solids,” IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics 120, 375–386, 1974.
Reprinted with permission of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
The topic of optical breakdown was of such general interest that I received an invitation to speak about it at a quantum electronics conference in June 1973 at Dresden, East Germany. I traveled by train from Eindhoven and was rudely awakened by border guards on crossing behind the iron curtain. Dresden was still heavily scarred by ruins from the World War II fire bombing. The train from Dresden to Berlin was pulled by a coal-burning steam locomotive. I crossed at Checkpoint Charlie back to West Berlin. The three-day trip was a powerful reminder of the East–West contrasts which prevailed at that time. Nikolai G. Basov from Moscow attended the conference as well, and he encouraged me to write up my Dresden talk in the form of a review article. This is the result. It was also published in the Soviet Journal of Quantum Electronics.
