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.**********