Recent Publication
Single-Shot Multi-Stage Damage and Ablation of Silicon by Femtosecond Mid-infrared Laser Pulses
Abstract: Although ultrafast laser materials processing has advanced at a breakneck pace over the last two decades, most applications have been developed with laser pulses at near-IR or visible wavelengths. Recent progress in mid-infrared (MIR) femtosecond laser source development may create novel capabilities for material processing. This is because, at high intensities required for such processing, wavelength tuning to longer wavelengths opens the pathway to a special regime of laser-solid interactions. Under these conditions, due to the λ2 scaling, the ponderomotive energy of laser-driven electrons may significantly exceed photon energy, band gap and electron affinity and can dominantly drive absorption, resulting in a paradigm shift in the traditional concepts of ultrafast laser-solid interactions. Irreversible high-intensity ultrafast MIR laser-solid interactions are of primary interest in this connection, but they have not been systematically studied so far. To address this fundamental gap, we performed a detailed experimental investigation of high-intensity ultrafast modifications of silicon by single femtosecond MIR pulses (λ = 2.7–4.2 μm). Ultrafast melting, interaction with silicon-oxide surface layer, and ablation of the oxide and crystal surfaces were ex-situ characterized by scanning electron, atomic-force, and transmission electron microscopy combined with focused ion-beam milling, electron diffractometry, and μ-Raman spectroscopy. Laser induced damage and ablation thresholds were measured as functions of laser wavelength. The traditional theoretical models did not reproduce the wavelength scaling of the damage thresholds. To address the disagreement, we discuss possible novel pathways of energy deposition driven by the ponderomotive energy and field effects characteristic of the MIR wavelength regime.
Highlight
Nonlinear manifestations of photon acceleration in time-dependent metasurfaces: tunable broadband harmonics generation
Abstract: Time-dependent nonlinear media, such as rapidly generated plasmas produced via laser ionization of gases, can increase the energy of individual laser photons and generate tunable high-order harmonic pulses. This phenomenon, known as photon acceleration, has traditionally required extreme-intensity laser pulses and macroscopic propagation lengths. Here, we report on a novel nonlinear material−an ultrathin semiconductor metasurface−that exhibits efficient photon acceleration at low intensities. We observe a signature nonlinear manifestation of photon acceleration: third-harmonic generation of near-infrared photons with tunable frequencies reaching up to ≈3.1ω. A simple time-dependent coupled-mode theory, found to be in good agreement with experimental results, is utilized to predict a new path towards nonlinear radiation sources that combine resonant upconversion with broadband operation. △ Less
Accepted for publication
Recent
- A. Mushtaq, T. Journigan, R. Siebenaller, C. Truong, M. Y. Noor, D. Khatri, M. A. Susner, E. Chowdhury, and M. Chini, “Efficient High-Order Harmonic Generation from the van der Waals Layered Crystal Copper Indium Thiophosphate,” J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1–2 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.4c04515
- B. M. Knight, C. M. Gautam, C. R. Stoner, B. V. Egner, J. R. Smith, C. M. Orban, J. J. Manfredi, K. D. Frische, M. L. Dexter, E. A. Chowdhury, and A. K. Patnaik, “Detailed Characterization of a kHz-rate Laser-Driven Fusion at a Thin Liquid Sheet with a Neutron Detection Suite,” High Power Laser Sci. Eng. 12, e2 (2024). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/hpl.2023.84 (selected for cover in 2024)
- A. Mushtaq, M. Y. Noor, R. Siebenaller, E. DeAngelis, A. Fisher, L. Clink, J. Twardowski, G. K. Salman, R. C. Myers, E. Rowe, B. S. Conner, M. A. Susner, and E. Chowdhury, “AgScP2S6 van der Waals Layered Crystal: A Material with a Unique Combination of Extreme Nonlinear Optical Properties,” J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 14, 3527–3534 (2023). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.3c00348
- D. Hui, H. Alqattan, S. Zhang, V. Pervak, E. Chowdhury, and M. T. Hassan, “Ultrafast optical switching and data encoding on synthesized light fields,” Sci. Adv. 9(8), eadf1015 (2023). (Cover of Science Advances). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adf1015
- M. R. Shcherbakov, G. Sartorello, S. Zhang, J. Bocanegra, M. Bosch, M. Tripepi, N. Talisa, A. AlShafey, J. Smith, S. Londo, F. Légaré, E. Chowdhury, and G. Shvets, “Nanoscale reshaping of resonant dielectric microstructures by light-driven explosions,” Nat. Commun. 14(1), 1–9 (2023). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-42263-w
- T. J. Bullard, K. Frische, C. Ebbing, S. J. Hageman, J. Morrison, J. Bulmer, E. A. Chowdhury, M. L. Dexter, T. J. Haugan, and A. K. Patnaik, “Directional microwave emission from femtosecond-laser illuminated linear arrays of superconducting rings,” Sci. Rep. 13(1), 1–9 (2023). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-44751-x
- Kiani, T. Zhou, S.-W. Bahk, J. Bromage, D. Bruhwiler, E. M. Campbell, Z. Chang, E. Chowdhury, M. Downer, Q. Du, E. Esarey, A. Galvanauskas, T. Galvin, C. L. Haefner, D. Hoffmann, C. Joshi, M. Kanskar, W. Lu, C. Menoni, M. Messerly, S. Mirov, M. Palmer, I. Pogorelsky, M. Polyanskiy, E. Power, B. Reagan, J. Rocca, J. Rothenberg, B. E. Schmidt, E. Sistrunk, T. Spinka, S. Tochitsky, N. Vafaei-Naja, J. Zuegel, and C. Geddes, “High average power ultrafast laser technologies for driving future advanced accelerators,” J. Instrum. 18, T08006 (2023). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-0221/18/08/T08006
- Mushtaq, A., Clink, L., Noor, M. Y., Kuz, C., Deangelis, E., Siebenaller, R., Fisher, A., Verma, D., Myers, R. C., Conner, B. S., Susner, M. A. and Chowdhury, E. (2022). Ultrafast Nonlinear Absorption and Second Harmonic Generation in Cu33In1.30P2S6 van der Waals Layered Crystals. Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, 10513-10521. doi:10.1021/acs.jpclett.2c02965
- Tripepi, M., Zhang, S., Harris, B., Talisa, N., Yoo, J. H., Peelaers, H., . . . Chowdhury, E. (2022). Few-cycle optical field breakdown and damage of gallium oxide and gallium nitride. APL Materials, 10(7). doi:1063/5.0083664
- Zhang, S., Menoni, C., Gruzdev, V., & Chowdhury, E. (2022). Ultrafast Laser Material Damage Simulation—A New Look at an Old Problem. Nanomaterials, 12(8). doi:3390/nano12081259
- Kevin Werner and Enam Chowdhury, Extreme Sub-Wavelength Structure Formation from Mid-IR Femtosecond Laser Interaction with Silicon, Nanomaterials 2021, 11(5), 1192; https://doi.org/10.3390/nano11051192
- Sara M Mueller, Dongjoon Kim, Stephen R McMillan, Steven J Tjung, Jacob J Repicky, Stephen Gant, Evan Lang, Fedor Bergmann, Kevin Werner, Enam Chowdhury, Aravind Asthagiri, Michael E Flatte and Jay A Gupta, Tunable tunnel barriers in a semiconductor via ionization of individual atoms, Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter (2021) https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-648X/abf9bd
- Maxim R Shcherbakov, Haizhong Zhang, Michael Tripepi, Giovanni Sartorello, Noah Talisa, Abdallah AlShafey, Zhiyuan Fan, Justin Twardowski, Leonid A Krivitsky, Arseniy I Kuznetsov, Enam Chowdhury, Gennady Shvets, Generation of even and odd high harmonics in resonant metasurfaces using single and multiple ultra-intense laser pulses, Nature Communications, 12 (1), pp. 1-6 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24450-9
- J. R. Smith, C. Orban, N. Rahman, B. Mchugh, R. Oropeza, and E. A. Chowdhury, “A Particle-In-Cell Code Comparison for Ion Acceleration: EPOCH, LSP, and WarpX,”
- Michael Tripepi, Andrew Barrette, Manuel Ferdinandus, Ben Eshel, Kent L. Averett, Enam A. Chowdhury, and Carl M. Liebig, “Supercontinuum generation in single-crystal YAG fibers pumped around the zero-dispersion wavelength” Applied Optics 60 (25), G126-G131 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1364/AO.427709
- Gregory K. Ngirmang, John T. Morrison, Kevin M. George, Joseph R. Smith, Kyle D. Frische, Chris Orban, Enam A. Chowdhury, and W. Mel Roquemore, “Evidence of radialWeibel instability in relativistic intensity laser-plasma interactions inside a sub-micron thick liquid target”. Scientific Reports 10, Article number: 9872 (2020)
- N. Talisa, A. Alshafey, M. Tripepi, J. Krebs, A. Davenport, E. Randel, C. S. Menoni, and E. A. Chowdhury, “Comparison of damage and ablation dynamics of thin film interference coatings initiated by few cycle pulses vs longer femtosecond pulses,” Opt. Lett. 45(9), 2672 (2020).
- C. N. Danson, C. Haefner, J. Bromage, T. Butcher, J.-C. Chanteloup, E. Chowdhury, A. Galvanauskas, L. Gizzi, C. Haefner, J. Hein, D. Hillier, N. Hopps, Y. Kato, E. Khazanov, R. Kodama, G. Korn, R. Li, Y. Li, J. Limpert, J. Ma, C. H. Nam, D. Neely, D. Papadopoulos, R. Penman, L. Qian, J. Rocca, A. Shaykin, C. Siders, C. Spindloe, S. Szatmári, J. Trines, RaoulZhu, P. Zhu, and J. Zuegel, “Petawatt and Exawatt Class Lasers Worldwide,” High Power Laser Sci. Eng. 7(August), e54 (2019).
- K. M. George, J. T. Morrison, S. Feister, G. K. Ngirmang, J. R. Smith, A. J. Klim, J. Snyder, D. Austin, W. Erbsen, K. D. Frische, J. Nees, C. Orban, E. A. Chowdhury, and W. M. Roquemore, “High-repetition-rate ( kHz ) targets and optics from liquid microjets for high-intensity laser – plasma interactions,” High Power Laser Sci. Eng. 7, 1 (2019).
- Kevin Werner, Michael G. Hastings, Aaron Schweinsberg, Brian L. Wilmer, Drake Austin, Christopher M. Wolfe, Miroslav Kolesik, Trenton R. Ensley, Laura Vanderhoef, Anthony Valenzuela, and Enam Chowdhury, “Ultrafast mid-infrared high harmonic and supercontinuum generation with n2 characterization in zinc selenide”, Optics Express 27, 2867 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.27.002867
- Noah Talisa, Enam Chowdhury, “Few cycle pulse laser ablation study of single layer TiO2 thin films using time resolved surface microscopy”, Optics Express, 26 (23), 30371 (2018). (Editor’s Pick)
- O. Sergaeva, V. Gruzdev, D. Austin, E. Chowdhury, “Ultrafast excitation of conduction-band electrons by high-intensity ultrashort laser pulses in band-gap solids: Vinogradov equations vs Drude model”, JOSA B 35 (11) 2895-2905 (2018). (among Top downloads)
- Drake Austin, K. Kafka, Y. Hai, Z. Wang, C. I. Blaga, Enam A. Chowdhury, “Femtosecond laser damage of germanium from near to mid-IR wavelengths”, Opt. Lett. 43(15), 3702-3705 (2018).
- John Morrison, Scott Feister, Kyle Frische, Drake Austin, Gregory Ngirmang, Neil Murphy, Chris Orban, Enam A. Chowdhury, W. M. Roquemore, “MeV proton acceleration at kHz repetition rate from ultra-intense laser liquid interaction”, Fast Track Communications, New Journal of Physics. (accepted). https://doi.org/10.1088/1367-2630/aaa8d1 (Corresponding author), over 2,500 downloads in 2018.
- Hyunwook Park, Antoine Camper, Kyle Kafka, Boqin Ma, Yu Hang Lai, Cosmin Blaga, Pierre Agostini, Louis F. DiMauro, and Enam Chowdhury, “High-order harmonic generations in intense mid IR fields by cascade 3-wave mixing in a fractal-poled LiNbO3 photonic crystal”, Vol. 42, Issue 19, pp. 4020-4023 (2017) https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.42.004020
- Scott Feister, Drake Austin, John Morrison, Kyle Frische, Chris Orban, Gregory Ngirmang, Abraham Handler, Joseph R. H. Smith, Mark Schillaci, Jay Laverne, Enam Chowdhury, R. R. Freeman, and W. M. Roquemore, “Relativistic electron acceleration by mJ-class kHz lasers normally incident on liquid targets”, Optics Express 25,16 pp. 18736-18750 (2017) https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.25.018736 (corresponding author)
- Gregory K. Ngirmang, Chris Orban, Scott Feister, John T. Morrison, Enam A. Chowdhury, W. M. Roquemore, “Particle-in-Cell Simulations of Electron Beam Production from Infrared Ultra-intense Laser Interactions”, Physics of Plasmas 24, 103112 (2017); doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4995669
- Kyle R. P. Kafka, Noah Talisa, Gabriel Tempea, Drake R. Austin,
Catalin Neacsu and Enam A. Chowdhury, Few-cycle pulse laser induced damage threshold determination of broadband optics, Optics Express 24, 28858 (2016).
- Boqin Ma, Kyle Kafka, and Enam Chowdhury Fourth-harmonic generation via nonlinear diffraction in 2D LiNbO3 nonlinear photonic crystal from mid-IR ultrashort pulses, Chinese Optics Letters 15(5), 051901 (2017).
- Zhiyuan Niu, Haris M. Ansari, Enam A. Chowdhury, Suliman A. Dregia, and Sheikh A. Akbar, Step Faceting and the Self-assembly of Nanoislands on Miscut YSZ(001) Surfaces, Applied Surface Science (2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apsusc.2017.02.165
- Robert A. Mitchell, Douglass W. Schumacher, Enam A. Chowdhury, First model of laser-induced periodic surface structure based on microscopic particle evolution from excitation to damage, submitted to Physical Review Letters.
- Drake. R. Austin, Kyle R.P. Kafka, Yu Hang Lai, Zhou Wang, Kaikai Zhang, Hui Li, Cosmin I. Blaga, Allen Y. Yi, Louis F. DiMauro, Enam A. Chowdhury, High spatial frequency laser induced periodic surface structure formation in germanium by mid-IR femtosecond pulses, Journal of Applied Physics, 120, 143103 (2016). (http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jap/120/14/10.1063/1.4964737)
- P. L. Poole, C. Willis, R. L. Daskalova, K. M. George, S. Feister, S. Jiang, J. Snyder, J. Marketon, D. W. Schumacher, K. U. Akli, L. Van Woerkom, R. R. Freeman, and E. A. Chowdhury, Experimental capabilities of 0.4 PW, 1 shot/min Scarlet laser facility for high energy density science, Applied Optics Vol. 55, pp. 4713-4719 (2016)
- K. R. P. Kafka, D. R. Austin, H. Li, A. Y. Yi, J. Cheng, and E. A. Chowdhury, Time-resolved measurement of single pulse femtosecond laser-induced periodic surface structure formation induced by a pre-fabricated surface groove, Optics Express 23, 19432 (2015).
- Drake R. Austin, Kyle R. P. Kafka, Simeon Trendafilov, Gennady Shvets, Hui Li, Allen Y. Yi, Urszula B. Szafruga, Zhou Wang, Yu Hang Lai, Cosmin I. Blaga, Louis F. DiMauro, and Enam A. Chowdhury, Laser induced periodic surface structure formation in germanium by strong field mid IR laser solid interaction at oblique incidence, Optics Express 23, 19522 (2015)
- Huimin Wang, Geoff Taber, Dejian Liu, Steve Hansen, Enam Chowdhury, Scott Terry, John C. Lippold, Glenn S. Daehn, Laser impact welding: design of apparatus and parametric optimization, Journal of Manufacturing Processes, 19, 118 (2015).
- Chris Orban, John T. Morrison, Enam A. Chowdhury, John A. Nees, Kyle Frische, Scott Feister, W. Melvyn Roquemore, Backward-Propagating MeV Electrons in Ultra-Intense Laser Interactions: Standing Wave Acceleration and Coupling to the Reflected Laser Pulse, Phys. Plasmas 22, 023110 (2015)
- Robert A. Mitchell, Douglass Schumacher, and Enam Chowdhury, Modeling femtosecond pulse laser damage using particle-in-cell simulations, Optical Engineering 53(12), 122507 (December 2014)
- Patrick Poole, Simeon Trendafilov, Gennady Shvets, Douglas Smith, and Enam Chowdhury, Femtosecond laser damage threshold of pulse compression gratings for petawatt scale laser systems, Optics Express, Vol. 21, Issue 22, pp. 26341-26351 (2013)
Conference Proceedings (recent)
- Best Student Presentation award: N. Talisa, M. Tripepi, B. Harris, J. Krebs, N. Talisa, M. Tripepi, B. Harris, A. Alshafey, J. Krebs, A. Davenport, E. Randel, C. S. Menoni, E. A. Chowdhury, E. Randel, C. S. Menoni, and E. A. Chowdhury, “Single-shot femtosecond laser- induced damage and ablation of HfO2/SiO2- based optical thin films: a comparison between few-cycle pulses and 110 fs pulses,” in Proc. SPIE 11173, Laser-Induced Damage in Optical Materials 2019, 11173 (2019), (November), pp. 111730U-1–9.
- Noah Talisa, Kevin Werner, Kyle Kafka, Drake R. Austin, Enam Chowdhury, Probing the dynamics of the interaction between few-cycle laser pulses and single crystal (100) Si and GaAs near the laser-induced damage threshold, in Proc. SPIE 10014, Laser-Induced Damage Opt. Mater. pp. 1–6 (2016).
- K.R.P. Kafka, N. Talisa, G. Tempea, D.R. Austin, C. Neacsu, and E.A. Chowdhury, Few-cycle pulse laser-induced damage of thin films in air and vacuum ambience in Proc. SPIE 10014, Laser-Induced Damage Opt. Mater. p. 100140D (2016).
- R.A. Negres, C.J. Stolz, K.R.P. Kafka, E.A. Chowdhury, M. Kirchner, K. Shea, and M. Daly, 40-fs broadband low dispersion mirror thin film damage competition, in Proc. SPIE 10014, Laser-Induced Damage Opt. Mater. p. 100140E (2016).
- Enam Chowdhury ; Kyle R. P. Kafka ; Drake R. Austin ; Kevin Werner ; Noah Talisa ; Boquin Ma ; Cosmin I. Blaga ; Louis F. DiMauro ; Hui Li ; Allen Yi, Ultra-fast bandgap photonics in mid-IR wavelengths Proc. SPIE 9835, Ultrafast Bandgap Photonics, 983519 (May 13, 2016); doi:10.1117/12.2223481
- Enam Chowdhury; Kyle R. P. Kafka; Robert Mitchell; Alex M. Russell; Kevin Werner; Noah Talisa; Hui Li; Allen Yi; Douglass Schumacher Single-shot femtosecond laser ablation of copper: experiment vs. simulation, Proc. SPIE 9632, Laser-Induced Damage in Optical Materials: 2015, 96320R
- K. R. P. Kafka; E. A. Chowdhury; R. A. Negres; C. J. Stolz; J. D. Bude; A. J. Bayramian; C. D. Marshall; T. M. Spinka; C. L. Haefner Test station development for laser-induced optical damage performance of broadband multilayer dielectric coatings, Proc. SPIE 9632, Laser-Induced Damage in Optical Materials: 2015, 96321C
- Christopher J. Stolz; Raluca A. Negres; Kyle Kafka; Enam Chowdhury; Matt Kirchner; Kevin Shea; Meaghan Daly 150-ps broadband low dispersion mirror thin film damage competition, Proc. SPIE 9632, Laser-Induced Damage in Optical Materials: 2015, 96320C
- Robert A. Mitchell; Douglass W. Schumacher; Enam A. Chowdhury First principles simulation of laser-induced periodic surface structure using the particle-in-cell method, Proc. SPIE 9632, Laser-Induced Damage in Optical Materials: 2015, 96320Y