Abstract

Since the discovery that refractive index changes can be induced in glasses that are irradiated by a femtosecond laser, waveguide writing for the development of photonic devices has become an active area of research [1]. Although this technique is coming of age, many aspects of the underlying physics are not fully understood and the optimum processing parameters are still debated. While the majority of early experiments have been carried out utilising ultrafast amplifiers at kHz repetition rates, it became apparent that the extremely low writing speeds represent a major disadvantage, especially with regard to industrial mass fabrication.

© 2009 IEEE