5/15/2008
"Advances in High Power Fiber Lasers: Novel Components, Systems and Applications"-Almantas Galvanauskas
Advances in High Power Fiber Lasers: Novel Components, Systems and Applications
Almantas Galvanauskas
Center for Ultrafast Optical Science
University of Michigan
Abstract:
Fiber lasers are the next generation laser technology, representing a radical conceptual shift from traditional lasers in that light in fiber cavities can be guided and controlled entirely within integrated glass structures. In effect, the very “classical” notion of a laser as consisting of a gain medium placed in free-space between two mirrors forming an open-cavity optical resonator is becoming replaced by a notion of an all-integrated “tweak-free” laser structure - somewhat resembling the revolutionary transition from vacuum tubes to silicon-chip electronics that occurred more than 50 years ago. This enables previously unprecedented degree of control over light in a laser medium, allowing very efficient, robust, compact, and reliable diode-pumped lasers with a great variety of novel laser architectures and functionalities, and with previously unattainably high optical powers and other laser-light characteristics. Anticipated impact of this new laser technology ranges from practical applications (industrial material processing, semiconductor and microelectronics industry, biomedical, sensing, EUV lithography, X-ray imaging, etc.) to scientific studies (spectroscopy, ultrafast, material science, high-intensity light-matter interactions, particle acceleration, etc.).
This talk will review our work in this rapidly advancing area, which spans from novel fiber structures and fiber devices, to high power fiber laser systems and novel applications. We had introduced a new class of fiber structures - so called Chirally-Coupled Core (CCC) fibers. CCC geometry uniquely enables fiber-core scaling while preserving fiber performance characteristics undistinguishable from truly single-mode fibers, and also has a great potential of achieving other unexpected functionalities, such as ability to effectively “suppress” fiber nonlinearities, to control fiber dispersion in large cores, etc. We have been also advancing state-of-the-art in kW and sub-kW power fiber lasers in continuous-wave, pulsed and ultrashort pulse operation regimes. This progress in high power systems is conducted with the objective of developing interesting new applications, which were previously considered unattainable with fiber technology. For example, in a series of recent collaborative experiments we had demonstrated that fiber lasers can be used to efficiently generate 13.4nm EUV radiation. This enables a potentially very economic path towards developing future lithography sources. Another example is our recent demonstration of hard-X-ray generation with a femtosecond fiber laser system, which could lead to high-radiance X-ray sources for material structural studies.
For more information contact Martin Richardson, 407-823-6819
