An ophthalmic laser system includes a laser engine to generate a beam of femtosecond laser pulses, a laser scanner to scan each laser pulse of the beam in three dimensions according to a scan pattern, and a compound lens comprising a glass lens and a birefringent lens, the compound lens arranged to receive the scanned beam and configured to split each laser pulse of the scanned beam into an ordinary pulse and an extraordinary pulse, producing an ordinary beam comprising ordinary pulses and an extraordinary beam comprising extraordinary pulses. A particular ordinary pulse and a particular extraordinary pulse split from a particular laser pulse are spatially separated in depth along an optical axis of the compound lens, by a distance greater than or equal to 5 μm, and temporally separated by a delay greater than or equal to a pulse duration of the femtosecond laser pulses. An objective is configured to focus the ordinary beam and the extraordinary beam within an ophthalmic target.
