Fabrication of polaritonic structures in LiNbO3 and LiTaO3 using femtosecond laser machining

Fabrication of patterned materials in ferroelectric LiNbO3 and LiTaO3 crystals using femtosecond laser micromachining is presented and discussed. Damage feature sizes in the 10-100 mu m range were achieved using 800-nm, 50-fs (FWHM) ultra-fast laser pulses with energies ranging from 10 mu J up to 350 mu J. Fabrication of polaritonic devices such as waveguides, resonators, focusing reflectors, diffractive and dispersive elements, photonic band gap materials, and other microstructures is demonstrated.