Formation of nanochannels in sapphire with ultrashort Bessel pulses.

We explore, both by numerical simulations and experimentally, the flexibility in controlling Bessel beam parameters by re-imaging it into transparent material with a demagnifying collimator for the formation of high-aspect ratio nanochannels. Analysis of nanochannels produced by in-house precision-made axicon with 275 fs pulses in sapphire reveals the intensity threshold of ∼7.2 × 1013 W/cm2 required to create the cylindrical microexplosion. We estimate that the maximum applied pressure during the process was 1.5 TPa and that the resulting density of compressed sapphire in the nanochannel's shells are ∼1.19 ± 0.02 times higher than the pristine crystal, and higher than what was achieved before in spherical microexplosion with Gaussian pulses.