Fabrication of photonic devices with femtosecond laser pulses

When femtosecond laser pulses are focused inside the bulk of transparent materials, the intensity in the focal volume becomes high enough to produce permanent structural modifications. This technique has been applied to fabricate three-dimensional photonic structures such as optical memory, waveguides, gratings, and couplers inside a wide variety of transparent materials. In this paper, we review fabrication of photonic elements in glasses with femtosecond laser pulses, including fabrication of waveguides, couplers, volume gratings, zone plates, holographic memory, and micro channels.