Material nanoprocessing with nondiffracting femtosecond Bessel beams

The use of nondiffracting femtosecond Bessel beams has recently been shown to be a powerful new approach for writing nanometer and micrometer surface features in glass. In this paper we review our recent experimental results in this area. The advantages of Bessel beams in yielding non-critical sample positioning and for fabricating high aspect ratio microchannels will be discussed in detail, and the underlying physical mechanisms involving plasma channel formation and filament formation will also be considered.