Fig. 1. Density (a) and temperature (b) contour plots predicted in atomistic simulation of laser ablation of a bulk silver target irradiated in water by a 10 ps laser pulse at an absorbed fluence of 600 mJ cm^–2. The blue line shows the location of the melting and solidification fronts. The two black lines outline the water-Ag mixing region defined as a region where both water molecules and Ag atoms are present. The blue dot background represents the presence of water beyond the pressure-transmitting boundary applied at the top of the water layer that is explicitly simulated with coarse-grained MD. The two dashed red lines outline the region for which snapshots of atomic configurations are shown in Fig. 2. The solid and dashed arrows show the trajectory of a spalled layer and a pressure pulse generated by collision of this layer with the molten metal layer accumulated at the interface with water environment, respectively.