Open AccessComparison of damage and ablation dynamics of multilayer dielectric films initiated by few-cycle pulses versus longer femtosecond pulses
Author(s) -
Noah Talisa,
Abdallah AlShafey,
Michael Tripepi,
Jacob Krebs,
Aaron Davenport,
Emmett Randel,
Carmen S. Mei,
Enam Chowdhury
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
optics letters/optics index
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.524
H-Index - 272
eISSN - 1071-2763
pISSN - 0146-9592
DOI - 10.1364/ol.389650
Subject(s) - femtosecond , ablation , optics , materials science , dielectric , dynamics (music) , optoelectronics , laser , physics , aerospace engineering , acoustics , engineering
The importance of high intensity few- to single-cycle laser pulses for applications such as intense isolated attosecond pulse generation is constantly growing, and with the breakdown of the monochromatic approximation in field ionization models, the few-cycle pulse (FCP) interaction with solids near the damage threshold has ushered a new paradigm of nonperturbative light-matter interaction. In this Letter, we systematically study and contrast how femtosecond laser-induced damage and ablation behaviors of S i O 2 / H f O 2 -based reflective multilayer dielectric thin film systems vary between FCP and 110 fs pulses. With time-resolved surface microscopy and ex situ analysis, we show that there are distinct differences in the interaction depending on the pulse duration, specifically in the "blister" morphology formation at lower fluences (damage) as well as in the dynamics of debris formation at higher fluences (ablation).