Micromachining with a 50 W, 50 μJ, sub-picosecond fiber laser system

A 50 W sub-picosecond fiber chirped pulse amplification system generating 50 mu J pulses at a repetition rate of 1 MHz is demonstrated. As required for precision high speed micro-machining, this system has a practical system configuration enabled by the fiber stretcher and 1780 1/mm dielectric diffraction grating compressor and is capable of ablation rates > 0.17 mm(3)/s metal, ceramic, and glass.