Feedback-controlled laser fabrication of micromirror substrates

Abstract: Short (40-200 microseconds) single focused CO2 laser pulses of energy of about 100 microJ were used to fabricate high quality concave micromirror templates on silica and fluoride glass. The ablated features have diameters of 20-100 microns and average root-mean-square (RMS) surface microroughness near their center of less than 0.2 nm. Temporally monitoring the fabrication process revealed that it proceeds on a time scale shorter than the laser pulse duration. We implement a fast feedback control loop (20 kHz bandwidth) based on the light emitted by the sample that ensures an RMS size dispersion of less than 5 percent in arrays on chips or in individually fabricated features on an optical fiber tip, a significant improvement over previous approaches using longer pulses and open loop operation.