Single shot laser writing with sub-nanosecond and nanosecond bursts of femtosecond pulses

A method is proposed for efficient laser modification of fused silica and sapphire by means of a burst of femtosecond pulses having time separation in the range 10–3000 ps. Modification enhancement with the pulse separation increase in the burst was observed on the tens picoseconds scale. It is proposed that accumulated transient tensile strain in the excitation region plays a crucial role in modification by a sub-nanosecond burst.The Acknowledgements section in this Article is incomplete.The section: “Advanced Research Foundation, grant #7/019/2014-2017, supported the laser inscription experiments. Ministry of Education of Science of Russian Federation, grant #14.Z50.31.0009, have funded measurement, math treatment and analysis of the obtained data. The authors are grateful to Dr. R. Drevinskas for discussions of methods for measuring the optical phase.”should read: “Advanced Research Foundation, grant #7/019/2014-2017, supported the laser inscription experiments. Ministry of Education of Science of Russian Federation, grant #14.Z50.31.0009, have funded measurement, math treatment and analysis of the obtained data. A part of the study related to the measurements of refractive index change was also supported by the Royal Society (UK) International Exchanges Program (Grant IE150203). The authors are grateful to Dr. R. Drevinskas for helpful discussions.