Ablation of copper by a scanning Gaussian beam of a femtosecond laser pulse

Abstract

This study investigated ablation from a copper metal surface using a scanning femtosecond laser beam with a Gaussian beam profile. A method was developed herein to calculate the ablation profile with experimentally identified parameters (e.g., effective focused Gaussian incident beam radius, ablation threshold fluence, effective energy penetration depth). The results show the relationship between the maximum ablation depth and maximum ablation width. The calculated ablation profile agrees well with the experimental measurements.