Laser ablation of dental tissues with picosecond pulses of 1.06-μm radiation transmitted through a hollow-core photonic-crystal fiber

Sequences of picosecond pulses of 1.06-mum Nd:YAG laser radiation with a total energy of similar to2 mJ are transmitted through a hollow-core photonic-crystal fiber with a core diameter of similar to14.1 mum and are focused onto a tooth's surface in vitro to ablate dental tissue. The hollow-core photonic-crystal fiber is shown to support the single-fundamental-mode regime for 1.06-mum laser radiation, serving as a spatial filter and allowing the laser beam's quality to be substantially improved. The same fiber is used to transmit emission from plasmas produced by laser pulses onto the tooth's surface in the backward direction for detection and optical diagnostics. (C) 2004 Optical Society of America.