Simulation of nonlinear propagation of femtosecond laser pulses in air for quantitative prediction of the ablation crater shape

The utilization of sub-100 fs pulses has attracted attention as an approach to further improve the quality and precision of femtosecond laser microfabrication. However, when using such lasers at pulse energies typical for laser processing, nonlinear propagation effects in air are known to distort the beam's temporal and spatial intensity profile. Due to this distortion, it has been difficult to quantitatively predict the final processed crater shape of materials ablated by such lasers. In this study, we developed a method to quantitatively predict the ablation crater shape, utilizing nonlinear propagation simulations. Investigations revealed that the ablation crater diameters derived by our method were in excellent quantitative agreement with experimental results for several metals over a two-orders-of-magnitude range in the pulse energy. We also found a good quantitative correlation between the simulated central fluence and the ablation depth. Such methods should improve the controllability of laser processing with sub-100 fs pulses and contribute to furthering their practical application to processes over a wide pulse-energy range, including conditions with nonlinear-propagating pulses.