Shorthand for femtosecond, 10 to the minus 15 seconds, and for the ultrafast lasers that produce pulses in that range. Femto lasers machine with little heat-affected zone, drive multiphoton microscopy and enable time-resolved spectroscopy. People say femto lab, femto system or femto pulses, and pico for picosecond lasers, which are slower but cheaper and more robust.
Pico laser leaves a melt rim on the stent struts, so the customer's trialing our femto source next week.
Also heard as
- femtosecond
- fs
Related terms
Ti:sapph
Titanium-doped sapphire, the broadband tunable laser crystal behind most femtosecond oscillators and amplifiers.
Pulse duration
How long a laser pulse lasts, normally given as the full width at half maximum of its intensity.
Mode locking
Fixing the phases of many longitudinal modes so they add up into a train of ultrashort pulses.
CPA
Chirped Pulse Amplification: stretching a short pulse before amplifying it, then recompressing it afterwards.