Micro/nanoscale surface patterning of zirconia ceramic is needed for surface functionalization and performance enhancement, such as improved biocompatibility of medical devices, as well as device miniaturization. Therefore, formation of laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) with periods shorter than the laser wavelength on a zirconia ceramic was carried out using an ultrashort pulsed laser. In this case, it is important to shorten the processing time required for forming the LIPSS without deteriorating the processing quality. Using the various-parameters-controlled laser processing and observation system, we optimized LIPSS formation by changing parameters such as pulse duration, repetition frequency, number of shots, and fluence.
For higher cell-to-module efficiency in Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) thin-film solar cells, it is important to reduce the loss of active area due to integrated connection. The integrated connection contains three scribing processes: P1 (back contact insulation), P2 (electrical connection) and P3 (transparent conductive oxide, shortly TCO front contact insulation). In this work, we focused on ultrashort-pulse laser scribing (λ=1034 nm, Δτ=300 fs) of TCO via lift-off process as damage-less P3 scribing of CIGS thin-film solar cells. The lift-off of TCO was caused by laser ablation of only an upper part of CIGS light-absorbing layer. The dependence of lift-off behavior on the laser pulse energy and TCO film thickness has been investigated. It was observed that the lift-off of TCO formed a heat-affected zone (HAZ) with a thickness up to 250 nm beneath the trench bottom, where the CIGS experienced to melt. Further, thinner TCO film required lower laser energy threshold for the TCO lift-off, which is favorable to higher solar cell efficiency due to smaller HAZ. Using the TCO liftoff as P3, a submodule with an active area of approximately 3.5 cm2 made by all laser scribing exhibited the conversion efficiency of 11.6 %. After post-annealing at 85 °C for 15 h in vacuum for recovering laser-induced damages, the efficiency was successfully improved to 15.0 %, which is comparable to mechanically-scribed one.
Three-mol% yttria-stabilized tetragonal zirconia polycrystal (3Y-TZP) is a fine engineering ceramic that offers high fracture resistance and flexural strength. Thus, it is often applied in mechanical components and medical implants. The surface roughness can be controlled to improve the device characters in some applications. Ultrashort pulse lasers can form laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) on 3Y-TZP, which have never been investigated in detail. Therefore, this paper reports the formation and characteristics of LIPSS formed on 3Y-TZP, focusing on the pulsewidth dependence. The LIPSS was formed by a Ti:sapphire chirped-pulse amplification system, which generates 810 nmcentered 80-fs pulses at a 570 Hz repetition rate. The measured ablation threshold peak fluence was ~1.5 J/cm2 and the LIPSS was formed at the peak fluence of 2.7–7.7 J/cm2. For linearly polarized pulses, the lines of the LIPSS were oriented parallel to the polarization direction, and their period was comparable to or larger than the center wavelength of the laser. These characteristics differ from the reported characteristics of LIPSS on metals and dielectrics. The pulsewidth dependence of the ablation and LIPSS was investigated for different pulsewidths and signs of chirp. Under the investigated fluence condition, the LIPSS period increased with increasing pulsewidth for both signs of chirp. Similar pulsewidth dependencies were observed for circularly polarized pulses.
We developed a passively stabilized Kerr-lens mode-locking scheme for diode-pumped Yb-doped-bulk lasers. Taking an Yb:YAG laser as an example, we succeeded in generating pulses as short as 105 fs, which is to our knowledge the shortest pulse ever produced from a Yb:YAG laser. The spectral width and average laser power are 11.0 nm and 123 mW, respectively.
We present a novel 3D display that can show any 3D contents in free space using laser-plasma scanning in the air. The
laser-plasma technology can generate a point illumination at an arbitrary position in the free space. By scanning the
position of the illumination, we can display a set of point illuminations in the space, which realizes 3D display in the
space. This 3D display has been already presented in Emerging Technology of SIGGRAPH2006, which is the basic platform of our 3D display project. In this presentation, we would like to introduce history of the development of the laser-plasma scanning 3D display, and then describe recent development of the 3D contents analysis and processing technology for realizing an innovative media presentation in a free 3D space. The one of recent development is performed to give preferred 3D contents data to the 3D display in a very flexible manner. This means that we have a platform to develop an interactive 3D contents presentation system using the 3D display, such as an interactive art presentation using the 3D display. We would also like to present the future plan of this 3D display research project.
An ultrashort pulse laser system with precisely controlled output-timing and carrier-envelope phase (CEP) is reported.
Recently developed technology Ofl CEP control of a mode-locked laser not only introduced an optical frequency comh
in frequency domain hut also gave us a way to generate optical pulses whose oscillating electric field is under a fixed
phase relation with the intensity shape. Fortunately, recent advances on optical physics have also showed that sonic types
of light-matter interactions become sensitive to the field shape when the pulse approaches a few cycles in duration and
has a high peak intensity. Owing to those advances, field-controlled ultrashort pulse generation, based on
suh-femtosecond resolution timing-control and sub-radian CEP control of femtosecond lasers, becomes an attractive
challenge. Our final goal is to realize a shaped electric field within optical-cycle time scale br researches on light-matter
interaction and other future application.
CEP control Ofl a mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser is the first step of such a laser system. Trade-off between the
accuracy and robustness of the control, and the monitoring technique of CEP br amplilication, will he discussed.
Amplification of a CEP-controlled pulse, which is necessary for most of time-domain application, is successfully
performed by the CEP monitoring technique. Our chirped-pulse amplifier, that includes a grating-based
stretcher/compressor, has a potential to achieve higher-energy amplification of a fixed CEP pulse. Multichannel phase
control of spectrally divided ultrashort pulses is applied to dynamic control of pulse-timing and CEP of amplifled pulses.
Related results on short-pulse, sub-l3fs, generation by a chirped-pulse Ti:sapphire amplifier, and multicolor
phase-coherent pulse sources will be also discussed briefly, showing our on-going efforts to approach the final goal.
Recent progress on ultrashort pulse lasers has made it possible to control the pulse timing and optical phases from different cavities very precisely. By applying detection and control techniques of the carrier-envelope phase to multicolor pulse sources with synchronized pulse timing, we obtained phase-coherent pulse-trains in different wavelengths. The pulse-trains have sufficient stability to achieve Fourier synthesis among optical fields. One of our test sources was a femtosecond optical parametric oscillator (OPO). Using a specially designed OPO whose signal and idler are sub-harmonics of the pump frequency, we obtained long-term stabilization of the optical phase among those three waves. Since the OPO also generates sum-frequencies of the three waves, six-color coherent pulse-trains from 425nm to 2550nm are available. Another test source was a passively synchronized mode-locked laser with two kinds of gain media, Ti:sapphire and Cr:forsterite. Although it is harder to reduce phase-noise between the different color pulses than in the OPO example, we can expect shorter pulse duration and higher average power from this type of coupled laser. These coherent multicolor pulse sources will be applied not only to shorter-pulse generation by field summation, but also to some applications that include competing non-linear processes among multicolor pulses.
We report on a diode-pumped Yb:S-FAP CPA laser system for laser-Compton X-ray generation. We obtained amplified pulse energies up to 114 mJ at a repetition rate of 50 Hz after the preamplifier in chirped-pulse amplification. We also obtained amplified pulse energies up to 0.6 J after the main amplifier in preliminary long-pulse experiments.
Timing synchronization between two independent Ti:sapphire mode-locked lasers has been developed for Laser-Compton X-ray generation. The lasers operated at different repletion frequencies of 119 MHz and 2856 MHz. The two lasers were actively synchronized with a phase-locked loop at a frequency of 2856 MHz. Fluctuation of the optical sum-frequency intensity was measured, and timing jitter was obtained. The rms timing jitter between the lasers was below 5 fs for several tens of seconds. The fluctuation was measured with a maximum observation bandwidth of 300 kHz. To improve long-time stability, a sum-frequency signal was fed back with a slow loop bandwidth, achieving long time operation for 1 hour with 5 fs synchronization.
We have developed a stable 7 terawatt (TW) (168 mJ per pulse, 24 fs pulse duration) Ti: sapphire laser system operating at 50 Hz for a generation of femtosecond X-ray pulses by inverse Compton scattering. We corrected the wavefront distortion of these high intensity laser pulses with adaptive optics using a Shack-Hartmann type wavefront sensor and a deformable mirror. We have also started developing a compact all-solid-state Yb: Sr5(PO4)3F (Yb: S-FAP) laser system to realize a practical X-ray pulse generation system. We measured thermal lensing induced in Yb: S-FAP crystal for design of a high-energy regenerative amplifier. In addition, we measured wavefront of the amplified pulses in the Yb:
S-FAP regenerative amplifier with the wavefront sensor.
We demonstrated generation of square-shaped ultraviolet pulses and that they reduces the emittance of electron beams from laser-photocathode RF-gun. Some frequency components of femtosecond pulses from a Ti:sapphire oscillator are modulated with a pulse shaper that consists of a lens pair, gratings, and a liquid crystal spatial light modulator (LC-SLM) to generate square-shaped pulses. The shaped pulses were amplified up to 3 mJ through a regenerative amplifier, and were converted to ultraviolet region with two different nonlinear crystals. Energy of the shaped pulses was about 100 (mu) J which is sufficient to generate electron charge of 1 nC. In our experiment, emittance of electron beam was reduced to as low as almost the half of that with non-shaped pulses.
Our recent developments are described regarding a novel synchronization architecture based on all optical method to achieve precise timing synchronization in a large and complex X-ray beam system. There are several key technologies in this approach, and the recent achievement is a precise synchronization of two independent mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser oscillators with an optical phase-locked loop. The cross correlation of two femtosecond lasers was measured for the relative timing jitter as small as 28 fs.
The timing jitter measurement scheme for low repetition rate pulse train is proposed. Measuring a spectrum of upconverted light generated from frequency mixing with a transform limited reference pulse and a linear-chirped amplified pulse, a relative time lag between two pulses can be obtained. The measurable range and resolution with this method are discussed.
Timing stabilization of mode-locked femtosecond laser is reported. Timing fluctuations of mode-locked laser come from the change in gain medium, and the change in cavity length via mechanical vibrations and environmental disturbances. To suppress the gain change, a low noise all-solid-state pump source was used. And the cavity optical length was controlled to be stable with a PZT and a motor driven translation stage. The timing jitter was reduced to be 77 fs.
The Kerr-lens mode-locked (KLM) laser with a novel five- mirror cavity is theoretically examined by applying the ABCD-matrix formalism for a Gaussian beam. Since the optimum configuration of the five-mirror cavity is obtainable at the middle of confined cavity condition, one can easily achieve the KLM alignment and stable mode-locking operation. Influence of the self-focus appearing in the five-mirror cavity configuration upon a semiconductor saturable-absorber mirror is also analyzed.
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