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Direct writing with tilted-front femtosecond pulses

Direct writing with tilted-front femtosecond pulses
Direct writing with tilted-front femtosecond pulses
Shaping light fields in both space and time provides new degrees of freedom to manipulate light-matter interaction on the ultrafast timescale. Through this exploitation of the light field, a greater appreciation of spatio-temporal couplings in focusing has been gained, shedding light on previously unexplored parameters of the femtosecond light pulse, including pulse front tilt and wavefront rotation. Here, we directly investigate the effect of major spatio-temporal couplings on light-matter interaction and reveal unambiguously that in transparent media, pulse front tilt gives rise to the directional asymmetry of the ultrafast laser writing. We demonstrate that the laser pulse with a tilted intensity front deposits energy more efficiently when writing along the tilt than when writing against, producing either an isotropic damage-like or a birefringent nanograting structure. The directional asymmetry in the ultrafast laser writing is qualitatively described in terms of the interaction of a void trapped within the focal volume by the gradient force from the tilted intensity front and the thermocapillary force caused by the gradient of temperature. The observed instantaneous transition from the damage-like to nanograting modification after a finite writing length in a transparent dielectric is phenomenologically described in terms of the first-order phase transition.
2045-2322
Patel, Aabid
19aacdf5-c01e-4122-94b6-a29c10485952
Svirko, Yuri
beb25cef-3c46-498d-974f-bba4929f0b6a
Durfee, Charles
a547df9a-76e1-4a5f-908f-0e7ea172367b
Kazansky, Peter G.
a5d123ec-8ea8-408c-8963-4a6d921fd76c
Patel, Aabid
19aacdf5-c01e-4122-94b6-a29c10485952
Svirko, Yuri
beb25cef-3c46-498d-974f-bba4929f0b6a
Durfee, Charles
a547df9a-76e1-4a5f-908f-0e7ea172367b
Kazansky, Peter G.
a5d123ec-8ea8-408c-8963-4a6d921fd76c

Patel, Aabid, Svirko, Yuri, Durfee, Charles and Kazansky, Peter G. (2017) Direct writing with tilted-front femtosecond pulses. Scientific Reports, 7, [12928]. (doi:10.1038/s41598-017-13403-2).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Shaping light fields in both space and time provides new degrees of freedom to manipulate light-matter interaction on the ultrafast timescale. Through this exploitation of the light field, a greater appreciation of spatio-temporal couplings in focusing has been gained, shedding light on previously unexplored parameters of the femtosecond light pulse, including pulse front tilt and wavefront rotation. Here, we directly investigate the effect of major spatio-temporal couplings on light-matter interaction and reveal unambiguously that in transparent media, pulse front tilt gives rise to the directional asymmetry of the ultrafast laser writing. We demonstrate that the laser pulse with a tilted intensity front deposits energy more efficiently when writing along the tilt than when writing against, producing either an isotropic damage-like or a birefringent nanograting structure. The directional asymmetry in the ultrafast laser writing is qualitatively described in terms of the interaction of a void trapped within the focal volume by the gradient force from the tilted intensity front and the thermocapillary force caused by the gradient of temperature. The observed instantaneous transition from the damage-like to nanograting modification after a finite writing length in a transparent dielectric is phenomenologically described in terms of the first-order phase transition.

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s41598-017-13403-2 - Version of Record
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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 22 September 2017
e-pub ahead of print date: 10 October 2017

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 414849
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/414849
ISSN: 2045-2322
PURE UUID: ec29d6d9-c409-416d-970e-111eb2cea90a
ORCID for Aabid Patel: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9902-5192

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Date deposited: 12 Oct 2017 16:31
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 16:22

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Contributors

Author: Aabid Patel ORCID iD
Author: Yuri Svirko
Author: Charles Durfee

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