The CO${}_2$ laser material interaction is commonly used for thermal treatments and processing of fused silica glasses. As the laser pulse duration decreases down to a few tens of microseconds, the heat-affected depth in the material decreases up to the point where it has the same magnitude as the laser radiation penetration depth, which is an interesting operating point for applications that require minimal heat-affected zone. In this work, we explore the effects of CO${}_2$ laser pulses in the range of 100 $\mu \mathrm{s}$ to a few milliseconds on the laser ablation of polished fused silica surfaces, based on experiments and numerical simulations. We particularly study the evolution of surface profile as a function of the number of applied pulses. The results suggest that the ablation depth can be accurately controlled from a few hundreds of nanometers to a few tens of micrometers by adjusting the combination of the number of applied pulses and pulse duration.

中文翻译：

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亚微秒脉冲 CO2 激光烧蚀熔融石英的实验和数值研究

公司${}_2$激光材料相互作用通常用于熔融石英玻璃的热处理和加工。随着激光脉冲持续时间降低到几十微秒，材料中的热影响深度降低到与激光辐射穿透深度具有相同幅度的点，这是需要的应用的一个有趣的工作点最小的热影响区。在这项工作中，我们探索了 CO 的影响${}_2$ 100 范围内的激光脉冲 $\mu \mathrm{秒}$根据实验和数值模拟，在抛光熔融石英表面的激光烧蚀上可达到几毫秒。我们特别研究了表面轮廓随施加脉冲数量的变化。结果表明，通过调整施加脉冲的数量和脉冲持续时间的组合，可以将烧蚀深度精确地控制在几百纳米到几十微米之间。