Measuring the ablation threshold fluence in femtosecond laser micromachining with vortex and Bessel pulses.

Femtosecond laser micromachining holds significant promise for advanced manufacturing, however uptake has been limited by the low processing speed. Altering the beam shape from its typical Gaussian profile has been attempted to improve efficiency, however virtually all reliable methods for quantifying the efficiency assume a Gaussian beam shape. Here, we describe an approach for quantifying the ablation threshold fluence - the key parameter for comparing efficiency - suitable for weakly focused non-Gaussian beams. We successfully demonstrate this method for Bessel and vortex beams, finding that the ablation threshold depends not just on the material, but the beam shape as well.