Conditions defining melting fluence thresholds for silicon under pulsed laser irradiation are introduced in this paper. The melting conditions include both thermal and non-thermal contributions. Furthermore, a definition of the non-thermal melting threshold is given as the laser fluence above which the non-thermal contribution dominates over the thermal one and a short-lived non-thermal liquid phase appears in the femtosecond time scale. Numerical values of thresholds obtained through a two-temperature model are in good agreement with experimental data. The dependence of fluence thresholds on both wavelength and pulse width is explored and discussed in detail.

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