2011, Mauclair, C., Mishchik, K., Mermillod-Blondin, A., Rosenfeld, A., Hertel, I.V., Audouard, E., Stoian, R.

Bulk machining of glasses with femtosecond laser pulses enables the fabrication of embedded optical functions. Due to the nonlinear character of the laser-matter interaction, structural modifications can occur within the focal region. To reach a full control of the process, ways of controlling the deposition of the laser energy inside the material have to be unveiled. From static and time-resolved pictures of bulk-excitation of a-SiO2 and borosilicate glass, we show that particular laser temporal shapes such as picosecond sequences can better confine the energy deposition than the femtosecond sequence by reducing the propagation artifacts.

2015, Wallrabe, Ulrike, Brunne, Jens, Treffer, Alexander, Grunwald, Ruediger, Bellouard, Yves

We report on the design, fabrication and testing of novel types of low-dispersion axicons for the adaptive shaping of ultrashort laser pulses. An overview is given on the basic geometries and operating principles of our purely reflective adaptive MEMS-type devices based on thermal or piezoelectric actuation. The flexible formation of nondiffracting beams at pulse durations down to a few oscillations of the optical field enables new applications in optical communication, pulse diagnostics, laser-matter interaction and particle manipulation. As an example, we show first promising results of adaptive autocorrelation. The combination of excellent pulse transfer, self-reconstruction properties and propagation invariance of nondiffracting beams with an adaptive approach promises to extend the field of practical applications significantly.