Harnessing Ultrafast Laser Induced Nanostructures in Transparent Materials

Abstract

Material processing with ultrafast lasers has attracted considerable interest due to a wide range of applications from laser surgery and integrated optics to optical data storage, 3D micro- and nano-structuring [1,2]. A decade ago it has been discovered that under certain irradiation conditions ordered sub-wavelength structures with features smaller than 20 nm can be formed in the volume of silica glass [3]. The effect of nanograting formation has attracted considerable interest with proposals of applications ranging from nanofluidics [4,5] to polarization control devices [6].