Refractive index patterning of tellurite glass surfaces by ultra short pulse laser spot heating

Dot patterns of refractive indices were formed by the laser pulse irradiation on the tellurite glasses. The ternary tellurite glasses of TeO₂-Na₂O-Al₂O₃, TeO₂-Na₂O-GeO₂ and TeO₂-Na₂O-TiO₂ doped with 2 mol% of CoO were irradiated by a femtosecond pulse laser beam (800 nm) or by a green light beam (532 nm) from a second harmonic generator of a Q switch pulse YAG laser. The refractive index map of the glass was composed with an He-Ne laser beam by an scanning ellipsometric technique at a resolution of 100 m × 50 m, indicating that the spots possessing refractive index lower by about 0.05–0.38 than the surroundings were formed at the region irradiated by the laser beam. The irradiation of the femtosecond laser beam generated the dot patterns roughly equivalent to the beam size. The change of refractive index could be tunable by adjusting laser power, suggesting that the process could be applied to optical recording.