A variable (0.2 to 5 MHz) repetition rate femtosecond laser was applied to delineate the role of thermal diffusion and heat accumulation effects in forming low-loss optical waveguides in borosilicate glass across a broad range of laser exposure conditions. For the first time, a transition from thermal diffusion-dominated transport at 200-kHz repetition rate to strong heat accumulation at 0.5 to 2 MHz was observed to drive significant variations in waveguide morphology, with rapidly increasing waveguide diameter that accurately followed a simple thermal diffusion model over all exposure variables tested. Amongst these strong thermal trends, a common exposure window of 200-mW average power and ~15-mm/s scan speed was discovered across the range of 200-kHz to 2-MHz repetition rates for minimizing insertion loss despite a 10-fold drop in laser pulse energy. Waveguide morphology and thermal modeling indicate that strong thermal diffusion effects at 200 kHz give way to a weak heat accumulation effect at ~1uJ pulse energy for generating low loss waveguides, while stronger heat accumulation effects above 1-MHz repetition rate offered overall superior guiding. The waveguides were shown to be thermally stable up to 800°C, showing promise for high temperature applications. Using a low numerical aperture (0.4) lens, the effect of spherical aberration was reduced, enabling similar low-loss waveguides over an unprecedented 520-um depth range, opening the door for multi-level, three-dimensional, optical integrated circuits. In contrast to borosilicate glass, waveguides written in pure fused silica under similar conditions showed only little evidence of heat accumulation, yielding morphology similar to waveguides fabricated with low repetition rate (1 kHz) Ti-Sapphire lasers. Despite the absence of heat accumulation in fused silica owing to its large bandgap and high melting point, optimization of the laser wavelength, power, repetition rate, polarization, pulse duration and writing speed resulted in uniform, high-index contrast waveguide structures with low insertion loss. Optimum laser exposure recipes for waveguide formation in borosilicate and fused silica glass were applied to fabricate optical devices such as wavelength-sensitive and insensitive directional couplers for passive optical networks, buried and surface microfluidic and waveguide networks for lab-on-a-chip functionality, and narrowband grating waveguides for sensing.

A variable (0.2 to 5 MHz) repetition rate femtosecond laser was applied to delineate the role of thermal diffusion and heat accumulation effects in forming low-loss optical waveguides in borosilicate glass across a broad range of laser exposure conditions. For the first time, a transition from thermal diffusion-dominated transport at 200-kHz repetition rate to strong heat accumulation at 0.5 to 2 MHz was observed to drive significant variations in waveguide morphology, with rapidly increasing waveguide diameter that accurately followed a simple thermal diffusion model over all exposure variables tested. Amongst these strong thermal trends, a common exposure window of 200-mW average power and ~15-mm/s scan speed was discovered across the range of 200-kHz to 2-MHz repetition rates for minimizing insertion loss despite a 10-fold drop in laser pulse energy. Waveguide morphology and thermal modeling indicate that strong thermal diffusion effects at 200 kHz give way to a weak heat accumulation effect at ~1uJ pulse energy for generating low loss waveguides, while stronger heat accumulation effects above 1-MHz repetition rate offered overall superior guiding. The waveguides were shown to be thermally stable up to 800°C, showing promise for high temperature applications. Using a low numerical aperture (0.4) lens, the effect of spherical aberration was reduced, enabling similar low-loss waveguides over an unprecedented 520-um depth range, opening the door for multi-level, three-dimensional, optical integrated circuits. In contrast to borosilicate glass, waveguides written in pure fused silica under similar conditions showed only little evidence of heat accumulation, yielding morphology similar to waveguides fabricated with low repetition rate (1 kHz) Ti-Sapphire lasers. Despite the absence of heat accumulation in fused silica owing to its large bandgap and high melting point, optimization of the laser wavelength, power, repetition rate, polarization, pulse duration and writing speed resulted in uniform, high-index contrast waveguide structures with low insertion loss. Optimum laser exposure recipes for waveguide formation in borosilicate and fused silica glass were applied to fabricate optical devices such as wavelength-sensitive and insensitive directional couplers for passive optical networks, buried and surface microfluidic and waveguide networks for lab-on-a-chip functionality, and narrowband grating waveguides for sensing.

Kyoto University (京都大学) / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(工学) / 甲第16403号 / 工博第3484号 / 新制||工||1526(附属図書館) / 29034 / 京都大学大学院工学研究科材料化学専攻 / (主査)教授 三浦 清貴, 教授 平尾 一之, 教授 田中 勝久 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当

Cataract surgery is one of the most common procedures performed in the entire world. Cataracts are inevitable in anyone who live to old age and as the global population continues to age, the number of cataract surgeries that are expected to be performed each year is only expected to increase. The procedure is also one of the oldest and has matured a substantial amount since its first utilization but it is still not perfect. It is crucial that we continue to improve to procedure in pursuit of improved post-operative outcomes for patients. In this study, a delayed phacoemulsification after the femtosecond laser anterior capsulotomy and lens fragmentation was introduced into the procedure with the hypothesis that this may allow the cataract to hydrate and soften, leading to an intraoperative reduced phacoemulsification power and a post-operative preservation of the corneal endothelium in grade 4 nuclear cataracts. This study is a new study with very little data collected so far but it is planned that we will initially perform the procedure on 10 patients with bilateral grade 4 cataracts. Each patient will have the new procedure done on one eye and then the typical cataract surgery procedure done on the other eye to be used as a statistical comparator. This thesis specifically explores the concept of introducing a delay between the capsulotomy and the phacoemulsification process and the safety and feasibility of such procedure in practice. The new procedure, so far, has been performed on one patient with the surgery data for the other eye currently pending. Relevant data such as cumulative dissipated energy and intraocular pressures were recorded during and after the surgery for future comparisons. Without a complete set of data, a statistical conclusion cannot be made about the efficacy of the new procedure, but as addressed in this thesis, the procedure has been concluded to be safe and feasible with a good post-operative outcome.

Ti: sapphire femtosecond laser ablation of dielectrics (fused silica and BK7 glass) and metals (Cu, Fe, Al) is presented. Results of laser -induced breakdown experiments in fused silica and BK7 glass employing 130 fs -1.7 ps, 790 nm laser pulses are reported. The fluence ablation threshold does not follow the scaling of 4>th ~ ^/2 when pulses are shorter than 1 ps. Single-shot and multi-shot (130 fs pulse) ablation of selected materials are investigated with laser wavelengths of 395 nm, 790 nm, and 1300 nm. The ablation threshold is almost independent of the laser wavelength. The surface morphologies in metals after ultrashort pulse ablation are very different from dielectrics and semiconductors. The roughness of the ablated surface depends on the thermal properties of the metal target. The preliminary TEM result from Cu single crystal that was irradiated by single laser pulses shows few defects in the center region of the ablated crater. Single-shot ablation of single-crystal Fe induces much different surface features than on selected samples of poly-crystal Fe metal. / Thesis / Master of Engineering (ME)

Femtosecond laser pulse has been used for the machining of the gratings primarily due to its superior advantages over conventional continuous wave (CW) and long pulse lasers for micromachining. In this paper, we develop a novel technique for the fabrication of planar gratings by colliding two beams to generate interference fringes. This technique is simple, fast and low cost. We have successfully fabricated planar gratings on a copper substrate. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

Photomasks are the backbone of microfabrication industries. Currently they are fabricated by lithographic process, which is very expensive and time consuming since it is a several step process. These issues can be addressed by fabricating photomask by direct femtosecond laser writing, which is a single step process and comparatively cheaper and faster than lithography. In this paper we discuss about our investigations on the effect of two types of laser writing techniques, namely, front and rear side laser writing with regard to the feature size and the edge quality of the feature. It is proved conclusively that for the patterning of mask, front side laser writing is a better technique than rear side laser writing with regard to smaller feature size and better edge quality. Moreover the energy required for front side laser writing is considerably lower than that for rear side laser writing. / Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA)

The ability to perceive the dynamics of nature is ultimately limited by the temporal resolution of the instruments available. With the help of the ultrashort optical pulse, people now are able to observe and steer the electronic dynamics on the atomic scale. Meanwhile, high power attainable in such short time scale helps to boost the study of nonlinear physics. Most commercial femtosecond lasers are based on Ti:sapphire, but such systems can only be tuned in a spectral range around 800 nm. Few applications need only a single wavelength in this spectral region and pulses tunable from the UV to the IR are highly desirable. Based on the soliton characteristics of ultrashort laser pulses, we are the first ones who propose to make use of resonant dispersive waves, which are phase-matched non-solitonic linear waves, to extend the spectral tuning range of ultrashort laser without involving complicated amplifiers. Experimentally, we achieve the tuning of dispersive wave wavelengths by changing the dispersion parameters of the laser cavity, and confirm dispersive waves are ultrashort pulses under appropriate conditions. We successfully apply such a system into a multi-wavelength operation Ti:sapphire laser. The proposed idea is general, and can be applied to systems where solitons dominate, for example fiber lasers. Thanks to the newly developed novel fiber -photonic crystal fiber- we obtain widely tunable and gap-free femtosecond pulse by extending this mechanism to waveguides. This is the largest reported tuning range for efficient nonlinear optical frequency conversion obtained with such a simple and low energy laser. We apply such a Ti:sapphire laser to Raman micro-spectroscopy. Because of the different temporal behaviors of the Raman process and other parametric processes, we can efficiently separate the coherent Raman signal from the unwanted background, and obtain a high chemical contrast and high resolution image. This high repetition rate and low energy laser oscillator makes it very suitable for biological Raman micro-spectroscopy, especially living samples for which damage is a big concern.

The carrier envelope (CE) phase of a femtosecond laser was stabilized. The laser produces an ultra stable comb of frequency spanning the visible region and basically is an optical frequency synthesizer and ready for the frequency domain applications. In this context, the CW stability of the Ti:sapphire laser is discussed to provide a procedure for the femtosecond laser adjustments. In addition, the pulse trains emitted by the femtosecond laser are described analytically to provide a theoretical basis for carrier envelope phase stabilization. An f to 2f interferometer was used to detect the carrier envelope offset frequency, and a fast photo diode was employed to measure the repetition rate. Two similar designed phase lock loops are used to stabilize both the carrier envelope offset frequency and the repetition rate to the respective reference frequencies. The stability reaches 100mHz for the carrier envelope offset frequency and 10mHz for the repetition rate for a period of up to an hour. Doppler free iodine saturation spectroscopy was set up to provide a precise frequency reference to which a CW dye laser can be locked on. The near future goal is to accurately measure this frequency stabilized dye laser with the optical frequency synthesizer.

We present experimentally determined photodisruption enhancement of 50 nm gold spheres irradiated with 780 nm 180 fs pulses using a pump-probe scattering system. Our results indicate a 300 nm cavitation bubble threshold reduction of 31 times when compared to an ultra-pure water base control solution. We utilize a method of matching time between bubble initiation in a continually circulated nanoparticle solution with theoretical focal volume size dependent time between particle-focal volume collision events based on simple particle kinetics. We propose the observed photodisruption is due to electrostatic particle ablation kinetics due to electron photoemission. We apply the Fowler-Dubridge theory for photoemission to nanospheres experiencing strong near-field enhancement to describe particle electric fields induced by non-zero particle charge densities resulting from emitted electrons. An apparent ultra-energy efficient photodisruption mechanism results from multiphoton emission processes in the sub 100 femtosecond pulse regime exceeding typical methods utilizing explosive boiling. In the process of explaining experimental results, we develop a near complete picture of nanoparticle mediated photodisruption as a function of identified relevant system non-dimensional groups and particle enhancement. These results may be used to guide the selection of laser and particle parameters for imaging and different photodisruption regimes. / text