High power pulsed ytterbium doped fibre lasers and their applications

Abstract

The aim of my project is to develop pulsed Ytterbium (Yb) doped fibre master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) systems seeded by semiconductor lasers. I was principally focused on two specific projects aligned to sponsored programs of research within the ORC pulsed fibre laser group: the first project, TSB funded project LAMPS, aimed to develop an important class of next generation laser system capable of average output powers of more than 100 W when operating in both the nanosecond and picosecond regimes. The goal was to develop a fully fiberized, polarisation maintaining, single transverse mode system. The full project included the development of the necessary diode & micro-optic systems, fibre beam delivery technology and with application focused evaluations in collaboration with our industrial partners. The main project partners were BAE Systems, Selex, Ceram, Intense Photonics, ORC, Herriot Watt University, Power Photonics, OptoCap and Rofin Sinar. I contributed to the development of the single transverse mode Ytterbium (Yb)-doped fibre system and achieved the full target specifications of 100 W of output power with single mode and single polarisation operation in both the nanosecond and picosecond regimes. In addition, second harmonic generation pumped by the fundamental beam at 1.06 µm was also achieved. In order to transfer from picosecond pulses to nanosecond pulses it is only necessary to switch the seed laser, the power amplifier system remaining unchanged making for a highly flexible system. Both fundamental and second harmonic beam were successfully used to do material processing and various high power frequency conversion experiments (visible, broadband supercontinuum and mid-IR). The second project, called HEGAC (also funded by the TSB), was a collaboration with the University of Cambridge and SPI Lasers Ltd. The aim of the HEGAC project was to develop a high power nanosecond fibre laser with an active pulse shaping capability suitable for cutting metals. This project targeted mJ pulses with more than 100 W average power at the final output – with a 200 W stretch objective. We first achieved more than 310 W using a free space seeding and pumping configuration in our laboratories proving power scaling of our proposed approach. I subsequently rebuilt and improved this system and developed a fully- fiberized version (including all pump launches). The laser was capable of generating >100 W of output power and pulse energies up to 2.5 mJ. This project also involved spatial mode as well as temporal pulse shaping. Using a pair of axicon lenses the normal Gaussian beam profile was converted to a ring shaped profile as required and the system tested up to average powers of 100 W. In addition to the normal temporal pulse shapes required using our pulse shaping system (square, triangle and step), I also achieved high average power pulses with smooth shaped pulses (Parabolic and Gaussian) using an adaptive pulse shaping technique. The laser was transported and successfully used in materials processing experiments at Cambridge, proving the robustness of the design and implementation. I also did some novel experiments on high efficiency Raman conversion exploiting the square shaped pulses possible using this laser.

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Identifiers

ORCID for D.J. Richardson: orcid.org/0000-0002-7751-1058

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