The Role of Temporal Energy Input in Laser Micro Machining using Nanosecond Pulses

New pulse shaping possibilities using pulsed lasers in the nanosecond range offer entirely new approaches at influence and investigate laser-matter-interactions. The authors report on the influence of the temporal energy input on ablation of metal using arbitrarily shaped infrared nanosecond laser pulses. The importance of a proper description of time-resolved energy input by using the accumulated energy is demonstrated in theoretical considerations as well as experimental investigations. The presented results clearly show that any averaging over pulse duration results in missing information about time-dependent interactions and can at the same time lead to significant differences in ablation results.