Ultrafast laser nanostructuring of glass: from S-waveplate to multidimensional data storage

Abstract

Material processing with ultrafast lasers has attracted considerable interest due to new science and a wide range of applications from laser surgery, integrated optics to optical data storage. A decade ago it has been discovered that under certain irradiation conditions ordered sub-wavelength structures with features smaller than 20 nm can be formed in the volume of silica glass. Here we discuss recent applications of self-assembled sub-wavelength structuring specifically polarization converters branded as the S-waveplate and polarization multiplexed optical data storage