Generation of ultrafast Bessel micro-beams and applications to laser surface nanoprocessing

The novel propagation characteristics of Bessel beams have been widely applied to optical manipulation and harmonic generation, and have provided new perspectives on fundamentals of ultrashort laser pulse propagation in nonlinear media. Fully exploiting their many unique properties, however, requires the development of techniques for the generation of high quality Bessel beams with flexible adjustment of the beam parameters. Moreover, long working distances are needed to produce Bessel beams inside bulk samples. In this paper, we report on the development of a novel spatial light modulator based setup that combines the properties of parameter flexibility, long working distance, high throughput and operation on micron-scale. We report both on the general characterization of the beam properties as well as a specific application in surface nanoprocessing.

[1]  Oto Brzobohatý,et al.  High quality quasi-Bessel beam generated by round-tip axicon. , 2008, Optics express.

[2]  Eric Mazur,et al.  Femtosecond laser micromachining in transparent materials , 2008 .

[3]  Jun Amako,et al.  Microstructuring transparent materials by use of nondiffracting ultrashort pulse beams generated by diffractive optics , 2003 .

[4]  Miceli,et al.  Diffraction-free beams. , 1987, Physical review letters.

[5]  L Furfaro,et al.  Surface nanoprocessing with nondiffracting femtosecond Bessel beams. , 2009, Optics letters.

[6]  K. Dholakia,et al.  Bessel beams: Diffraction in a new light , 2005 .

[7]  Chih-Kung Lee,et al.  Effect of subwavelength annular aperture diameter on the nondiffracting region of generated Bessel beams. , 2009, Optics express.

[8]  M. Bock,et al.  Programmable ultrashort-pulsed flying images. , 2009, Optics express.

[9]  Rajarshi Roy,et al.  Generation of nondiffracting Bessel beams by use of a spatial light modulator. , 2003, Optics letters.

[10]  W Sibbett,et al.  Generation of multiple Bessel beams for a biophotonics workstation. , 2008, Optics express.

[11]  Gerard Mourou,et al.  Machining of sub-micron holes using a femtosecond laser at 800 nm , 1995 .

[12]  A. Parola,et al.  Nonlinear unbalanced Bessel beams in the collapse of Gaussian beams arrested by nonlinear losses. , 2008, Optics letters.

[13]  Paolo Di Trapani,et al.  Generation of extended plasma channels in air using femtosecond Bessel beams. , 2008, Optics express.

[14]  M J Withford,et al.  High aspect ratio taper-free microchannel fabrication using femtosecond Bessel beams. , 2010, Optics express.

[15]  G. Mourou,et al.  A study of the deterministic character of optical damage by femtosecond laser pulses and applications to nanomachining , 2003 .