Measurement of optical materials ablation threshold dependence on the dispersion of ultrashort pulses

Abstract

The ablation threshold for ultrashort pulses of common optical materials (BK7 glass, Sapphire and Fused Silica), was measured using the D-Scan technique, for positive and negative dispersions covering pulse durations from 30 fs to 100 fs. We observed that the ablation threshold for a single shot and at saturation increase with the pulse duration and the material bandgap, and also that defects which decrease the threshold values accumulate faster as the material bandgap increases.