Giant birefringence and dichroism induced by ultrafast laser pulses in hydrogenated amorphous silicon

Drevinskas, Rokas, Beresna, Martynas, Gecevičius, Mindaugas, Khenkin, Mark, Kazanskii, Andrey G., Matulaitienė, Ieva, Niaura, Gediminas, Konkov, Oleg I., Terukov, Eugene I., Svirko, Yu. P. and Kazansky, Peter G. (2015) Giant birefringence and dichroism induced by ultrafast laser pulses in hydrogenated amorphous silicon. Applied Physics Letters, 106 (17), 1-6. (doi:10.1063/1.4919538).

Abstract

A femto- and picosecond laser assisted periodic nanostructuring of hydrogenated amorphous silicon (α-Si:H) is demonstrated. The grating structure with the subwavelength modulation of refractive index shows form birefringence (Delta.n ~ -0.6) which is two orders of magnitude higher than commonly observed in uniaxial crystals and femtosecond laser nanostructured silica glass. The laser-induced giant birefringence and dichroism in α-Si:H film introduce extra dimensions to the polarization sensitive laser writing with applications that include data storage, security marking, and flat optics.

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