TY - CONF A1 - Mermillod-Blondin, A. A1 - Mauclair, C. A1 - Rosenfeld, A. A1 - Bonse, Jörn A1 - Stoian, R. A1 - Audouard, E. T1 - Time-resolved imaging of bulk a-SiO2 upon various ultrashort excitation sequences T2 - Proceedings of SPIE - Photonics West 2011 N2 - Ultrashort pulses lasers are tools of choice for functionalizing the bulk of transparent materials. In particular, direct photoinscription of simple photonic functions have been demonstrated. Those elementary functions rely on the local refractive index change induced when focusing an ultrashort pulse in the volume of a transparent material. The range of possibilities offered by direct photoinscription is still under investigation. To help understanding, optimizing and assessing the full potential of this method, we developed a time-resolved phase contrast microscopy setup. The imaginary part (absorption) and the real part of the laser-induced complex refractive index can be visualized in the irradiated region. The setup is based on a commercially available phase contrast microscope extended into a pump-probe scheme. The originality of our approach is that the illumination is performed by using a pulsed laser source (i.e. a probe beam). Speckle-related issues are solved by employing adequate sets of diffusers. This laser-microscopy technique has a spatial resolution of 650 nm, and the impulse response is about 300 fs. The laser-induced refractive index changes can be tracked up to milliseconds after the energy deposition. The excitation beam (the pump) is focused with a microscope objective (numerical aperture of 0.45) into the bulk of an a-SiO2 sample. The pump beam can be temporally shaped with a SLM-based pulse shaping unit. This additional degree of flexibility allows for observing different interaction regimes. For instance, bulk material processing with femtosecond and picosecond duration pulses will be studied. T2 - Photonics West 2011 CY - San Francisco, CA, USA DA - 22.01.2011 PY - 2011 DO - https://doi.org/10.1117/12.876687 VL - 7925 IS - 79250R SP - 1 EP - 7 AN - OPUS4-23332 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER - TY - CONF A1 - Bonse, Jörn A1 - Rosenfeld, A. A1 - Krüger, Jörg ED - Panchenko, V. ED - Mourou, G. ED - Zheltikov, A. M. T1 - Femtosecond laser-induced periodic surface structures: recent approaches to explain their sub-wavelength periodicities T2 - LAT 2010 - International Conference on Lasers, Applications, and Technologies (Proceedings of SPIE) N2 - The formation of laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) upon irradiation of semiconductors and dielectrics by linearly polarized high-intensity Ti:sapphire fs-laser pulses (τ ~100 fs, λ ~800 nm) is studied experimentally and theoretically. In the experiments, two different types of LIPSS exhibiting very different spatial periods are observed (socalled LSFL – low spatial frequency LIPSS, and HSFL - high spatial frequency LIPSS), both having a different dependence on the incident laser fluence and pulse number per spot. The experimental results are analyzed by means of a new theoretical approach, which combines the generally accepted LIPSS theory of J. E. Sipe and co-workers [Phys. Rev. B 27, 1141-1154 (1983)] with a Drude model, in order to account for transient changes of the optical properties of the irradiated materials. The joint Sipe-Drude model is capable of explaining numerous aspects of fs-LIPSS formation, i.e., the orientation of the LIPSS, their fluence dependence as well as their spatial periods. The latter aspect is specifically demonstrated for silicon crystals, which show experimental LSFL periods Λ somewhat smaller than λ. This behaviour is caused by the excitation of surface plasmon polaritons, SPP, (once the initially semiconducting material turns to a metallic state upon formation of a dense free-electron-plasma in the material) and the subsequent interference between its electrical fields with that of the incident laser beam, resulting in a spatially modulated energy deposition at the surface. Upon multi-pulse irradiation, a feedback mechanism, caused by the redshift of the resonance in a grating-assisted SPP excitation, is further reducing the LSFL spatial periods. The SPP-based mechanism of LSFL successfully explains the remarkably large range of LSFL periods between ~0.6 λ and λ. T2 - LAT 2010 - International Conference on Lasers, Applications, and Technologies CY - Kazan, Russia DA - 23.08.2010 KW - Femtosecond laser ablation KW - Laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) KW - Surface plasmon polaritons KW - Second harmonic generation (SHG) KW - Silicon KW - Semiconductors KW - Dielectrics PY - 2011 DO - https://doi.org/10.1117/12.879813 SN - 0277-786X N1 - Serientitel: Proceedings of SPIE – Series title: Proceedings of SPIE VL - 7994 SP - 79940M-1 EP - 79940M-10 CY - Bellingham, USA AN - OPUS4-23291 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -