High Power Femtosecond Fiber Laser Research Articles

Femtosecond Yb-doped tapered fiber pulse amplifiers with peak power of over hundred megawatts.

Ultrafast fiber lasers combining high peak power and excellent beam quality in the 1-µm wavelength range have been explored to applications in industry, medicine and fundamental science. Here, we report generation of a high-energy sub 300 fs polarization maintaining fiber chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system by using a Yb-doped large mode area tapered polarization maintaining (PM) optical fiber with the core/cladding diameters of 35/250 µm at the thin end and 56/400 µm at the thick end. The taper fiber design features a confined core for selective gain amplification and multi-layer cladding for enhanced suppression of higher order modes. In this regime, we have demonstrated 266 fs pulse amplification with peak power of up to 132 MW at a repetition rate of 2 MHz and high beam quality with measured M2 value of 1.1∼1.3. To the best of our knowledge, it is the highest peak power reported in such tapered Yb-doped fiber (T-YDF) amplifier in the femtosecond regime. This work indicates the great potential of the T-YDF to realize further power scaling, high laser efficiency, and excellent beam quality in high-power femtosecond fiber lasers.

>10 GHz femtosecond fiber laser system at 2.0 μm.

We demonstrate a high-power 2.0-μm fiber laser system delivering femtosecond pulses with a fundamental repetition rate of >10 GHz, the highest value so far, to the best of our knowledge. The seed is a self-started fundamentally mode-locked Tm-doped fiber laser that has excellent power and spectral stabilities. The laser system can provide an average power of >600 mW, and the use of soliton-effect-based pulse compression allows the achievement of a pulse duration of 163 fs, leading to a compression factor of ∼ 13. It is anticipated that this new high-power femtosecond fiber laser with a 10-GHz-level fundamental repetition rate can serve as a promising light source for various applications, including laser surgery, micromachining, frequency comb spectroscopy, and nonlinear frequency conversion.

Simultaneous Manipulation of the Optical and Wettability Properties of Metal Surfaces Using 150 kHz Femtosecond Fiber Laser

We demonstrate the formation of permanent and iridescent colors on aluminum, copper, steel, and brass surfaces using femtosecond laser-induced periodic and non-periodic nanostructuring. We show that both the permanent and iridescent colors of the metal surfaces can be erased and re-colored using a second stage of laser processing. A correlation was found between the spectral reflective properties of the laser-processed surfaces and their wettability properties. Transition from superhydrophilic to superhydrophobic response is observed while tailoring the optical reflectance of the metal surfaces. We employ a high power femtosecond fiber laser at 150 kHz repetition rate, which notably reduces the processing time, making this technique attractive for practical applications.

Glass surface metal deposition with high-power femtosecond fiber laser

Using femtosecond fiber laser-based additive manufacturing (AM), metal powder is deposited on glass surface for the first time to change its surface reflection and diffuse its transmission beam. The challenge, due to mismatch between metal and glass on melting temperature, thermal expansion coefficient, brittleness, is resolved by controlling AM parameters such as power, scan speed, hatching, and powder thickness. Metal powder such as iron is successfully deposited and demonstrated functions such as diffusion of light and blackening effects.

高功率飞秒光纤激光系统的研究进展

高功率飞秒光纤激光系统的研究进展

Multimodal fiber source for nonlinear microscopy based on a dissipative soliton laser.

Recent developments in high energy femtosecond fiber lasers have enabled robust and lower-cost sources for multiphoton-fluorescence and harmonic-generation imaging. However, picosecond pulses are better suited for Raman scattering microscopy, so the ideal multimodal source for nonlinear microcopy needs to provide both durations. Here we present spectral compression of a high-power femtosecond fiber laser as a route to producing transform-limited picosecond pulses. These pulses pump a fiber optical parametric oscillator to yield a robust fiber source capable of providing the synchronized picosecond pulse trains needed for Raman scattering microscopy. Thus, this system can be used as a multimodal platform for nonlinear microscopy techniques.

All fiber-based Yb-doped high energy, high power femtosecond fiber lasers

Two all fiber-based laser systems are demonstrated to achieve high energy and high average power femtosecond pulsed outputs at wavelength of 1 µm. In the high energy laser system, a pulse energy of 1.05 mJ (0.85 mJ after pulse compressor) at 100 kHz repetition rate has been realized by a Yb-doped ultra large-core single-mode photonic crystal fiber (PCF) rod amplifier, seeded with a 50 µJ fiber laser. The pulse duration is 705 fs. In the high average power experiment, a large mode area (LMA) fiber has been used in the final stage amplifier, seeded with a 50 W mode locked fiber laser. The system is running at a repetition rate of 69 MHz producing 1052 W of average power before compressor. After pulse compression, a pulse duration of 800 fs was measured.

Multiwatt octave-spanning supercontinuum generation in multicore photonic-crystal fiber

High-power supercontinuum spanning over more than an octave was generated using a high power femtosecond fiber laser amplifier and a multicore nonlinear photonic crystal fiber (PCF). Long multicore PCFs (as long as 20 m in our experiments) are shown to enable supercontinuum generation in an isolated fundamental supermode, with the manifold of other PCF modes suppressed due to the strong evanescent fields coupling between the cores, providing a robust 5.4 W coherent supercontinuum output with a high spatial and spectral quality within the range of wavelengths from 500 to 1700 nm.

A high power photonic crystal fiber laser oscillator based on nonlinear polarization rotation mode-locking

A high power femtosecond fiber laser based on a Yb-doped large mode area photonic crystal fiber operating in an all-normal dispersion regime is experimentally demonstrated. A ring laser cavity is used without any elements for dispersion compensation. Stable mode-locking is achieved through nonlinear polarization rotation and the dissipative function of a filter. The laser directly outputs 1.03 ps chirped pulses at a 49.09 MHz repetition rate for an average power of 10 W, corresponding to a pulse energy of 202 nJ. The pulses are compressed to 95.5 fs with a grating pair outside the cavity.

Type-I cascaded quadratic soliton compression in lithium niobate: Compressing femtosecond pulses from high-power fiber lasers

The output pulses of a commercial high-power femtosecond fiber laser or amplifier are typically around 300-500 fs with a wavelength around 1030 nm and 10s of $\mu$J pulse energy. Here we present a numerical study of cascaded quadratic soliton compression of such pulses in LiNbO$_3$ using a type I phase matching configuration. We find that because of competing cubic material nonlinearities compression can only occur in the nonstationary regime, where group-velocity mismatch induced Raman-like nonlocal effects prevent compression to below 100 fs. However, the strong group velocity dispersion implies that the pulses can achieve moderate compression to sub-130 fs duration in available crystal lengths. Most of the pulse energy is conserved because the compression is moderate. The effects of diffraction and spatial walk-off is addressed, and in particular the latter could become an issue when compressing in such long crystals (around 10 cm long). We finally show that the second harmonic contains a short pulse locked to the pump and a long multi-ps red-shifted detrimental component. The latter is caused by the nonlocal effects in the nonstationary regime, but because it is strongly red-shifted to a position that can be predicted, we show that it can be removed using a bandpass filter, leaving a sub-100 fs visible component at $\lambda=515$ nm with excellent pulse quality.

High power femtosecond fiber laser for industrial applications

High power femtosecond fiber laser for industrial applications