Ultrafast laser ablation of copper by GHz bursts

The ablation of copper, using a 10 GHz burst ultrafast laser with a wavelength of 1030 nm, a pulse duration of 1 ps, a variable total laser fluence, and a number of sub-pulses per burst, is investigated theoretically. A two-temperature model with an extended Lorentz–Drude model for dynamic optical properties is used to simulate the melting and ablation process. Due to the heat accumulation from the preceding pulses, multipulse laser ablation could be advantageous over a single pulse. Moreover, the ablation performance can be maximized by properly selecting the pulse number, separation time, and energy in a laser burst. The numerical result shows that the present prediction is in fairly agreement with existing experimental result. Under the same total laser fluence of 32 J/cm2, a 10 GHz burst laser with an optimized 128 sub-pulse can significantly enhance the ablation depth, 4.2 times that a single pulse does. It is found that the optimized ablation depth is a linear function of the total fluence of ultrafast laser bursts.