Rapid calculation of the energy deposition profiles for processing of dielectrics with femtosecond lasers

The energy deposition profile of a focused beam inside a dielectric material is conditioned by linear and nonlinear propagation effects. This can substantially distort the desired shape of the transformed region in laser processing applications [1]. By solving the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE) using the split-step propagation technique or similar calculation procedures it is possible to perform accurate estimations of the energy deposition profile [2,3]. However, this is usually not practical in terms of a balance between computation time and accuracy. Thus, an experimental study considering various parameters (pulse energy, duration, processing depth, beam ellipticity, etc.) is the typical approach to determine a set of optimized “laser writing” parameters that yield the best result.