Multi-GHz 'Smart' Burst-mode ultrafast-laser processing of microfluidic structures, biological/medical materials and difficult industrial materials

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Four faculty members in Physics, Engineering and Medical Biophysics, together with their students and postdocs, two Canadian companies and a European collaborator, request funding to advance a new generation of intense ultrashort-pulse fibre-laser for manufacturing and high value-added materials treatment, built around two new paradigms: (1) the use of "programmable silicon" instead of custom-designed discrete electronics for shaping, control and stabilization of very fast (2 GHz) laser pulsetrains, according to the application; and (2) 'burst-mode' laser processing at ultra-high repetition rates, above 2 GHz.Ultrafast-pulse lasers, as a class, are now well-known to make remarkable cuts with very low collateral impact. More recently, burst-mode lasers, delivering such pulses in very rapid succession (1-100 MHz) have been shown as a new mode of delivery -- one which gives very precise control of intentional heat accumulation, material sublimation, plasma-mediated ablation, and material modification. In the last year has come the discovery that >2 GHz is even better still than 100 MHz.Our system will deliver trains of high peak power without requiring multi-kilowatt average power, and "programmable silicon" will make it a self-monitoring, self-regulating laser which compares its last output pulse to a template pattern, then corrects operations in ~30ns real time. We'll bypass the need to precisely predict the nonlinear gain dynamics of the ~20,000x amplifier. For this, this system is far more stable and precise, and offers a huge and flexible range of options for different modes of delivery: from ultra-gentle sublimation machining to very specific control of heat for direct-writing internal waveguide structures, from dicing glass in pieces to welding it together, and then changing to writing internal diagnostic optical waveguides -- all without any retooling. Foundational research is one part of the project, to establish optimal patterns, or 'pulse plans', for different needs of processing glasses, crystals, polycrystalline ceramics, biomedical implant materials, metals and others.