Ablation of different materials with sub-100 fs pulses

Reliable industrial femtosecond lasers deliver output pulse duration from 200 fs to 1000 fs. External pulse compression allows shortening the pulse duration of these lasers well below 100 fs with an efficiency of typically 90%. Thus, for the first time, femtosecond lasers with <100 fs pulse duration become available for many applications. We study ablation of different glasses such as Schott , BK7, Fused Silica, Gorilla Glass, Zerodur and also Polyamide (Kapton) at 1030 nm central wavelength and 50 fs pulse duration. We compare those results with the ablation at 200 fs, 500 fs, and 1 ps pulse durations. Our results show that sub 100 fs and, in particular 100 fs pulses, show nearly no chipping when ablating the glass, lower roughness (40%), virtually no stress, or significantly less stress induced in the glass, depending on the type of glass and regime of ablation. Additionally, transparent ablation is possible in some types of glass (eg.Schott D263 and Gorilla glass). Also, we can form colorful structures on the surface of the glass which might be of interest for glass marking.