  The present paper elucidates the physical mechanism that accounts for the
principal/primary stages of the structuring process taking place upon
irradiation of a conductive solid with multiple identical femtosecond laser
pulses, based on the consideration of a hybrid theoretical model. Heat transfer
along with hydrodynamics simulations demonstrate that it is possible to create
morphology change conditions by solely exploiting capillary effects, in the
absence of either non-thermal melting or evaporation. Simulation results,
confirmed by experiments, reveal the intermediate surface modification stage
acting as a predecessor of microcones formation.
