High power short pulse fiber lasers are applied in industry for many ablation processes or various surface treatments, and there is a huge demand for such lasers but with higher average power, higher pulse energy and higher peak power. This contribution presents a high peak- and average- power fiber laser with selectable pulse durations between 10 ns and 100 ns, where more than 150 mJ pulse energy has been achieved at a repetition rate of 10 kHz. In addition, for a laser pulse with 30 ns pulse duration a maximum peak power of more than 3.5 MW at more than 1 kW average output power have been demonstrated. These results could be achieved by applying extra-large mode area (XLMA) gain fibers (fiber core <100 μm) in the fiber amplifiers and using pulse shape capabilities of the seed laser, only. Stable and safe operation of the fiber laser have been shown with power densities up to 3 GW/cm² in the gain fiber. In order to protect the fiber laser to be affected by back reflections from the workpiece, a newly designed optical isolator with more than 30 dB isolation has been implemented.
KEYWORDS: Optical simulations, Data modeling, High power fiber lasers, Fiber lasers, Fiber amplifiers, Step index fibers, Absorption, Cladding, Fiber Bragg gratings, Lawrencium, Lead
The power scaling of high power fiber lasers has decelerated recently, due to transverse mode instability (TMI) and photodarkening (PD). The origin of TMI is a power transfer from the fundamental mode of the fiber to higher transverse modes due to self-induced thermo-optical long period gratings. The excitation of higher modes can lead to temporal instability and a bend-loss-induced reduction of the laser power.
Over the lifetime of a fiber laser, the TMI threshold is decreased due to photodarkening of the fiber. Many investigations have been made to model both effects, but the microscopic mechanisms both of TMI and PD are not yet fully understood. The existing models are either comprehensive, but very slow and therefore limited to the simulation of short fibers, or reduced models that do not take transverse effects into account. Furthermore, these models have been applied only to single-pass fiber amplifiers so far.
We present a hierarchical numerical approach that allows to first precalculate the transverse distribution of the photodarkening losses, and then apply the precalculated data to a scalar coupled-mode model of the fiber laser. As a result, it is possible to perform virtual long term tests simulating several 10 000 hours of laser operation in a few hours. The transverse distribution of photodarkening losses in the fiber and the mode coupling gain can be analyzed at any cross section along the fiber.
The simulation results are compared to experimental data, which demonstrates the feasibility of the approach to predict the TMI threshold for different laser setups.
KEYWORDS: Fiber lasers, Oscillators, Polarization, High power lasers, High power fiber lasers, Fiber Bragg gratings, Laser applications, Laser cutting, Laser systems engineering, Laser optics
We have demonstrated a linearly polarized cw all-in-fiber oscillator providing 1 kW of output power and a polarization extinction ratio (PER) of up to 21.7 dB. The design of the laser oscillator is simple and consists of an Ytterbium-doped polarization maintaining large mode area (PLMA) fiber and suitable fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) in matching PLMA fibers. The oscillator has nearly diffraction-limited beam quality (M² < 1.2). Pump power is delivered via a high power 6+1:1 pump coupler. The slope efficiency of the laser is 75 %. The electro/optical efficiency of the complete laser system is ~30 % and hence in the range of Rofin’s cw non-polarized fiber lasers. Choosing an adequate bending diameter for the Yb-doped PLMA fiber, one polarization mode as well as higher order modes are sufficiently supressed1. Resulting in a compact and robust linearly polarized high power single mode laser without external polarizing components. Linearly polarized lasers are well established for one dimensional cutting or welding applications. Using beam shaping optics radially polarized laser light can be generated to be independent from the angle of incident to the processing surface. Furthermore, high power linearly polarized laser light is fundamental for nonlinear frequency conversion of nonlinear materials.
Pulsed fiber lasers and continuous-wave (cw) fiber lasers have become the tool of choice in more and more laser based industrial applications like metal cutting and welding mainly because of their robustness, compactness, high brightness, high efficiency and reasonable costs. However, to further increase the productivity with those laser types there is a great demand for even higher laser power specifications. In this context we demonstrate a pulsed high peak- and averagepower fiber laser in a Master Oscillator Power Amplifier (MOPA) configuration with selectable pulse durations between 1 ns and several hundred nanoseconds. To overcome fiber nonlinearities such as stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) and self-phase-modulation (SPM) flexible Ytterbium doped extra-large mode area (XLMA) step index fibers, prepared by novel powder-sinter technology, have been used as gain fibers. As an example, for 12 ns pulses with a repetition rate of 10 kHz, a pump power limited average laser output power of more than 400 W in combination with peak powers of more than 3.5 MW (close to self-focusing-threshold) has been achieved in stable operation. The potentials of this laser system have been further explored towards longer pulse durations in order to achieve even higher pulse energies by means of pulse shaping techniques. In addition, investigations have been conducted with reduced pulse energies and repetition rates up to 500 kHz and average powers of more than 500 W at nearly diffraction limited beam quality.
High power Yb doped fiber laser sources are beside CO2- and disk lasers one of the working horses of industrial laser
applications. Due to their inherently given robustness, scalability and high efficiency, fiber laser sources are best suited to fulfill the requirements of modern industrial laser applications in terms of power and beam quality. Pumping Yb doped single-mode fiber lasers at 976nm is very efficient. Thus, high power levels can be realized avoiding limiting nonlinear effects like SRS. However the absorption band of Yb doped glass around 976nm is very narrow. Therefore, one has to consider the wavelength shift of the diode lasers used for pumping. The output spectrum of passively cooled diode lasers is mainly defined by the applied current and by the heat sink temperature. Furthermore the overall emission line width of a high power pump source is dominated by the large number of needed diode laser emitters, each producing an individual spectrum. Even though it is possible to operate multi-kW cw single-mode fiber lasers with free running diode laser pumps, wavelength stabilizing techniques for diode lasers (e.g. volume holographic gratings, VHG) can be utilized in future fiber laser sources to increase the output power level while keeping the energy consumption constant. To clarify the benefits of wavelength stabilized diode lasers with integrated VHG for wavelength locking the performance of a dual side pumped fiber oscillator is discussed in this article. For comparison, different pumping configurations consisting of stabilized and free-running diode lasers are presented.
KEYWORDS: Fiber lasers, Disk lasers, Resonators, Oscillators, Semiconductor lasers, High power lasers, Solid state lasers, Laser development, Ytterbium, Laser systems engineering
The Performance of High Power Disk Lasers and Fiber Lasers along with their rapid development to the high power cw
regime have been of great interest throughout the last decade.
Both technologies are still in the focus of several conferences, workshops, and papers and represent the "state-of-the-art"
of industrial high power solid state lasers for material processing. As both laser concepts are considered to be the leading
1 μm light-source, this presentation presents an objective and fair comparison of the two different technologies from a
manufacturer who pursued both.
From the geometry of the active material, through the resonator design, cooling regime, and pumping method to the point
of beam quality and power scaling, the different approaches associated with the advantages, challenge and limits of each
technology will be discussed.
Based on ROFIN's substantial industrial experience with both laser concepts, an outlook into future trends and chances,
especially linked to fiber laser, will be given.
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