Experimental investigation of high aspect ratio tubular microstructuring of glass by means of picosecond Bessel vortices

We report on experiments on glass material modification using nondiffractive high-order picosecond pulsed Bessel beams, generated by a spatial light phase modulator and then suitably demagnified. We investigate the possibility to generate in single-shot tubular microstructures across 100-mu m-thin borosilicate glass, when a suitable energy range is considered, and we highlight the effect of the unstable propagation regime for very high input energies, leading to a breakup of the tubular microstructure. The micromachined glass samples are observed on their top and bottom surfaces as well as longitudinally along their thickness. For the conical beam geometry used, we observe no internal material modification pattern with pulses in the femtosecond range. A comparison with glass machining by means of a focused ring-shaped beam is also presented. The results highlight the role of the conical energy flux for single-shot smooth high aspect ratio material modification in a regime where nonlinear Kerr effects are absent.