A substrate cutting apparatus and a method of manufacturing a display apparatus by using the substrate cutting apparatus, so that an occurrence of an error in cutting a substrate may be prevented and the substrate may be exactly cut. The substrate cutting apparatus includes an integrated laser beam oscillator where an infrared wavelength laser beam oscillator and a short pulse laser beam oscillator are adjacent to each other and are fixed; a stage on which a substrate is disposed; and a transfer unit that transfers at least one of the substrate and the integrated laser beam oscillator so as to control a short pulse laser beam to be irradiated on a region of the substrate, on which an infrared wavelength laser beam emitted from the integrated laser beam oscillator has just been irradiated.

According to one aspect, the invention relates to a device (1, 2, 3) for laser nanomachining a sample made of a material having a given transparency band, the device comprising: a focusing module (203, 703) allowing a nondiffracting beam (210, 710) to be generated, along a focusing line generally oriented along the optical axis of the focusing module, from a given incident beam; first means (202, 702) for emitting a first light pulse (I.sub.1) of spectral band comprised in the transparency band of said material, able to generate in said material, after focusing by said focusing module, a plasma of free charges along said focusing line via multi-photon absorption, thus forming a plasma channel; and second means (202, 702) for emitting at least one second electromagnetic wave (I.sub.2) of spectral band comprised in the transparency band of said material, which wave(s) is/are intended to be spatially superposed on said plasma channel in order to heat said material via absorption by the free charges of the plasma.

A device for processing a workpiece using a laser beam of a laser includes a retarder plate and a focusing device. The retarder plate is configured to apply a first location-dependent phase retardation to a first part of the laser beam having a first input polarization, and to apply a second location-dependent phase retardation to a second part of the laser beam having a second input polarization. The focusing device is configured to focus the laser beam in at least one focus zone. A beam form of the laser beam in the focus zone is determined by the first location-dependent phase retardation and the second location-dependent phase retardation. The at least one focus zone at least partially overlaps with the workpiece. The workpiece is subjected to laser radiation in the at least one focus zone and is thus processed.

Disclosed is a UV-visible laser system having ultrashort pulses with high power and/or high energy. The laser system includes at least one non-linear optical crystal (1) adapted for receiving two distinct ultrashort laser pulses (31, 32) in the visible or infrared domain emitted respectively by two distinct laser pulse sources (11, 12) and a temporal synchronization unit (41, 42) adapted so that the two ultrashort laser pulses (31, 32) are superimposed in time and space in the non-linear optical crystal (1) with any phase shift, and generate, by sum frequency, an ultrashort laser pulse (131) having an optical frequency equal to the sum of the respective optical frequencies of the two distinct laser pulses (31, 32).

A laser welding method includes preliminarily heating an entire welding path by irradiating the entire welding path with a heating laser beam for a first predetermined time, the welding path being closed loop-shaped and formed at a boundary between two workpieces as welding objects, and performing scanning with a welding laser beam along the welding path while continuously performing the irradiation with the heating laser beam after the preliminary heating and terminating the irradiation with the welding laser beam after the welding laser beam goes around the welding path.

A substrate has a first surface with at least one division line formed thereon and a second surface opposite the first surface. The substrate is processed by applying a pulsed laser beam from the side of the first surface. The substrate is transparent to the pulsed laser beam. The pulsed laser beam is applied at least in a plurality of positions along the at least one division line, a focal point of the pulsed laser beam located at a distance from the first surface in the direction from the first surface towards the second surface, so as to form a plurality of modified regions inside the substrate. Each modified region is entirely within the bulk of the substrate, without any openings open to the first surface or the second surface. Substrate material is removed along the at least one division line where the modified regions are present.

The invention concerns an apparatus and its use for laser processing. The invention also concerns a method and an optical component. According to the invention, at a first laser device, providing a first optical feed fiber and a second laser device providing a second optical feed fiber is provided. A beam combining means connected to the first and second feed fibers and to a multi-core optical fiber is adapted to form a composite laser beam by having the first optical feed fiber aligned with a first core of the multi-core optical fiber and the second optical feed fiber aligned with at least one second core of the multi-core optical fiber. The first and second cores outputs a composite laser beam to a workpiece to be processed. A control unit individually controls the power density of the output laser beams.

A thermal processing apparatus and method in which a first laser source, for example, a CO.sub.2 emitting at 10.6 ?m is focused onto a silicon wafer as a line beam and a second laser source, for example, a GaAs laser bar emitting at 808 nm is focused onto the wafer as a larger beam surrounding the line beam. The two beams are scanned in synchronism in the direction of the narrow dimension of the line beam to create a narrow heating pulse from the line beam when activated by the larger beam. The energy of GaAs radiation is greater than the silicon bandgap energy and creates free carriers. The energy of the CO.sub.2 radiation is less than the silicon bandgap energy so silicon is otherwise transparent to it, but the long wavelength radiation is absorbed by the free carriers.

A semiconductor laser oscillator includes a diode unit configured from a plurality of banks, in which one bank is configured from a plurality of laser diodes connected in series. The diode unit includes a wavelength locking mechanism for locking to a plurality of wavelengths. The semiconductor laser oscillator includes a controller configured to control input currents to the laser diodes of each of the plurality of banks individually in correspondence to a characteristic of a wavelength locking efficiency, and to control an output of the diode unit as a whole to a required output.

The present invention generally relates to an optical system that is able to reliably deliver a uniform amount of energy across an anneal region contained on a surface of a substrate. The optical system is adapted to deliver, or project, a uniform amount of energy having a desired two-dimensional shape on a desired region on the surface of the substrate. Typically, the anneal regions may be square or rectangular in shape. Generally, the optical system and methods of the present invention are used to preferentially anneal one or more regions found within the anneal regions by delivering enough energy to cause the one or more regions to re-melt and solidify.