Abstract

Industrial ultrafast lasers are today an important part of many industrial processes. Their ability for high quality, virtually athermal material processing, coupled to advances in laser technology, process development and beam handling and delivery has opened the way for numerous advanced scientific and industrial applications. In order to achieve economic breakeven points, several criteria must be fulfilled simultaneously. First, the technical feasibility of the industrial process has to be demonstrated. Because of the unique nature of ultrafast laser matter interaction, this usually requires sophisticated scientific understanding of the process. Second, the productivity of the industrial process must guarantee a sufficient return on investment for the end-user. This has led to an important effort in laser development towards high average power ultrafast lasers. This, in turn, requires advances in beam handling and delivery to take full advantage of the potential processing speed.

© 2015 IEEE