Analysis on volume grating induced by femtosecond laser pulses

We report on a kind of self-assembled volume grating in silica glass induced by tightly focused femtosecond laser pulses. The formation of the volume grating is attributed to the multiple microexplosion in the transparent materials induced by the femtosecond pulses. The first order diffractive efficiency is in dependence on the energy of the pulses and the scanning velocity of the laser greatly, and reaches as high as 30%. The diffraction pattern of the fabricated grating is numerically simulated and analyzed by a two dimensional FDTD method and the Fresnel Diffraction Integral. The numerical results proved our prediction on the formation of the volume grating, which agrees well with our experiment results.