Abstract
This paper investigates the extension of optical fibre beam delivery to high-brightness applications, in particular laser percussion drilling, where both a good beam quality and high peak power are required. Beam quality preservation through a number of optical fibres is studied both experimentally and by using a ray propagation model. It is determined that in order to achieve the beam quality required for percussion drilling ( M 2<30) the largest fibre which can be used is 400 μm diameter. The laser-induced damage threshold is measured for a number of 400 μm fibres, and a CO 2 laser-annealing technique is shown to increase the damage threshold by a factor of 10, allowing 28 J, 1 ms pulses to be transmitted.
Published Version
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