Single-pulse ultrafast laser imprinting of axial dot arrays in bulk glasses

Cyril Mauclair (1) , Alexandre Mermillod-Blondin (2) , Landon Sébastien (1) , Huot Nicolas (1) , Arkadi Rosenfeld (2) , Ingolf-Volker Hertel (3) , Éric Audouard (1) , I. Miyamoto (4) , Razvan Stoian (1)

1 LHC - Laboratoire Hubert Curien [Saint Etienne]
2 MBI - Max-Born-Institut für Nichtlineare Optik und Kurzzeitspektroskopie
3 MBI - Max-Born-Institut für Nichtlineare Optik und Kurzzeitspektroskopie
4 Osaka University, Osaka 565-0871, Japan

Ultrafast laser processing of bulk transparent materials can significantly gain flexibility when the number of machining spots is increased. We present a photoinscription regime in which an array of regular dots is generated before the region of main laser focus under single-pulse exposure in fused silica and borosilicate crown glass without any external spatial phase modulation. The specific position of the dots does not rely on nonlinear propagation effects but is mainly determined by beam truncation and is explained by a Fresnel propagation formalism taking into account beam apodization and linear wavefront distortions at the air/glass interface. The photoinscription regime is employed to generate a two-dimensional array of dots in fused silica. We show that an additional phase modulation renders flexible the pattern geometry.

Keywords: Lasers and laser optics : Laser materials processing; Ultrafast optics : Femtosecond phenomena; Fourier optics and signal processing : Wave propagation

Domains: Engineering Sciences [physics]; Optics / Photonic

Cyril Mauclair, Alexandre Mermillod-Blondin, Landon Sébastien, Huot Nicolas, Arkadi Rosenfeld, et al.. Single-pulse ultrafast laser imprinting of axial dot arrays in bulk glasses. Optics Letters, 2011, 36 (6), pp.325-327. ⟨10.1364/OL.36.000325⟩. ⟨ujm-00561720⟩