Theoretical model for visible light saturable absorber nanolithography

In this paper a saturable absorber medium is employed as an optical limiter to reduce the spot size to the range of several tens of nanometres. The characteristics of a Gaussian beam are theoretically analysed upon propagation through the saturable absorber medium. Based on Maxwell equations a system of coupled nonlinear ordinary differential equations for intensity, beam radius and beam curvature is obtained. Theoretical analyses and numerical results show that the behaviour of a Gaussian beam in a saturable absorber medium strongly depends on the initial characteristics of the laser beam. Numerical results indicate that, depending on the initial conditions and a suitable saturable absorber thickness, a desirable nano-spot size can be obtained. Also, under suitable initial conditions there are possibilities to achieve nanometric spot sizes with laser intensity less than saturation intensity. (paper)