The laser is one of the most important inventions in the 20^th century, which has profoundly improved scientific research capabilities and the quality of human life. With the continuous advancements in laser technology, the output power of lasers has been significantly increased. For example, the widely used fiber laser has achieved 10 kW-level continuous wave (CW) output with a single fiber, and over 100 kW laser power through beam combining technology, for broad applications in laser processing, laser weapons and other fields. The high-energy pulsed laser has been developed with a maximum of pulse energy of 1 MJ for the nanosecond laser, and approximately 10 PW peak power for the femtosecond laser. The introduction of the high-power laser source allowed creating a series of new frontier interdisciplinary subjects, including inertial confinement fusion (ICF), laser driven particle accelerator, strong field quantum electrodynamics, and laser material processing. For many of those topics, the interaction between the high-power laser and materials has resulted in new interesting and fundamental physics problems. In addition to theoretical analysis, direct imaging‐ased observation of ultrafast dynamic processes is an important approach to understand many fundamental issues in laser–material interaction. In the process of laser–material interaction, the thermalization time of optically excited electrons is of the order of femtoseconds. Phonon relaxation occurs within several picoseconds, thermal diffusion and shock wave generation range from tens of picoseconds to nanoseconds, and the dynamics of molten pool occurs of a microsecond order. The frame rate of conventional array sensors, such as charge‐coupled devices (CCDs) and complementary metal oxide semiconductors (CMOSs), is not large enough for temporally resolved photography of the aforementioned ultrafast dynamics. A variety of ultrafast imaging technologies for different applications are thus being rapidly developed.

The team of Prof. Sheng Liu from Wuhan University and Prof. Keisuke Goda from University of Tokyo published a review entitled "Ultrafast imaging for uncovering laser–material interaction dynamics" in the International Journal of Mechanical System Dynamics (IJMSD). This paper reviews the principles and applications of three types of commonly-used ultrafast imaging methods, including pump–probe imaging technology, X‐r ay diagnosis technology, and single‐shot optical imaging technology. The advantages and limitations of each ultrafast imaging technology are analyzed. The scope of discussion mainly focuses on the application of high-power laser, including strong-field physics, damage mechanisms, and laser processing methods. The process above the damage threshold was the main focus. Finally, it is pointed out that the single-shot burst imaging technique, such as femtosecond time‐r esolved optical polarimetry (FTOP) and sequentially timed all‐optical mapping photography (STAMP), will become a reliable measurement method, while there are still some parameters, such as the number of frames, that need to be improved. This review can serve as a reference for researchers in related fields, despite difficulties in covering all the ultrafast imaging technologies.