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Updated: Aug 13, 2026
Construction and Characterization of External Cavity Diode Lasers for Atomic Physics
Published on: April 24, 2014
Damage and ablation of large bandgap dielectrics induced by a 46.9 nm laser beam
A Ritucci1, G Tomassetti, A Reale
1Department of Physics, University of L'Aquila, gc Laboratorio Nazionale del Gran Sasso, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, 67010 Coppito, L'Aquila, Italy. antonio.ritucci@aquila.infn.it
Abstract:
We applied a 0.3 mJ, 1.7 ns, 46.9 nm soft-x-ray argon laser to ablate the surface of large bandgap dielectrics: CaF2 and LiF crystals. We studied the ablation versus the fluence of the soft-x-ray beam, varying the fluence in the range 0.05-3 J/cm2. Ablation thresholds of 0.06 and 0.1 J/cm2 and ablation depths of 14 and 20 nm were found for CaF2 and LiF, respectively. These results define new ablation conditions for these large bandgap dielectrics that can be of interest for the fine processing of these materials.