Дисертації з теми "High power fiber laser"

Le développement de sources optiques ayant une forte brillance et un large spectre est nécessaire pour différentes applications telles que les contremesures optroniques, les systèmes LIDAR et la spectroscopie. Ce travail de thèse est consacré à l'étude de la génération de supercontinuum de forte puissance dans le domaine spectral allant de 2 à 5 μm. Un laser à fibre dopé thulium, émettant à 2 μm, a été réalisé et caractérisé en régimes continu, déclenché et à verrouillage de modes déclenchés. En régime continu, une puissance de 45 W a été atteinte avec un rendement différentiel de 58%. L'intégration de deux embouts en quartz fondu, fusionnés aux extrémités de la fibre active, a permis une amélioration drastique du contrôle de la température et de la stabilité générale du système dans tous les régimes de fonctionnement précédemment mentionnés. En régime combiné, de verrouillage de modes déclenchés, la puissance moyenne maximale en sortie de laser était de 40 W à une fréquence de déclenchement de 150 kHz. Pour une puissance moyenne en sortie de 20 W et une fréquence de déclenchement de 50 kHz, l'impulsion verrouillée la plus énergétique avait une énergie de 88 μJ et une puissance crête estimée de 60 kW. Dans tous les régimes de fonctionnement mentionnés, le facteur de propagation du faisceau M2 était proche de la limite de diffraction avec une excellente valeur de 1,1. Le faisceau de ce laser fibré a été utilisé pour pomper des fibres optiques en fluorure pour la génération de supercontinuum dans le domaine spectral de 2 à 5 μm. Les travaux expérimentaux ont été focalisés sur les matériaux en fluorure que sont le ZBLAN et le fluorure d’indium (InF3). Avec la fibre en ZBLAN, plus de 10 W ont été générés sur l'ensemble du domaine spectral avec une limite supérieure de domaine spectrale allant jusqu'à 4,4 μm. L'efficacité de conversion du supercontinuum a été mesurée à 35%, 28%, 15% et 8% pour un faisceau généré de longueur d'onde supérieure à 2,15 μm, 2,65 μm, 3,1 μm et 3,5 μm, respectivement. Concernant la fibre en InF3, la réalisation d'un nouveau système d'injection (combinant une fibre ZBLAN large coeur et un coupleur commercial fibre à fibre) a permis d'atteindre une grande stabilité thermo-mécanique de la fibre pendant les expériences à haute puissance. La génération de supercontinuum dans cette fibre s'est concrétisée par un faisceau de sortie dont le spectre atteignait la longueur d'onde de 4,7 μm et une puissance de 7 W sur l'ensemble du domaine spectral. À notre connaissance, ceci est le premier faisceau supercontinuum, ayant une puissance de l'ordre de quelques watts, généré dans une fibre en InF3 pompée par un oscillateur unique
High brightness and broad spectrum optical sources in the mid-infrared (mid-IR) are promising for different applications such as optronic countermeasures, LIDAR systems and spectroscopy. This thesis research work is dedicated to the investigation of high power supercontinuum generation in the 2-5 μm range. A thulium-doped fiber laser emitting at 2 μm has been built and characterized in continuous wave, Q-switching and Q-switched mode-locking regime. In continuous wave operation, as much as 45 W have been reached with a slope efficiency of 58%. The implementation of two fused-quartz end-caps fusion spliced at the extremities of the active-fiber improved the thermal management and the overall stability of the entire system in all mentioned regimes of operation, allowing for higher pump powers. In Q-switched mode-locking, the maximum average output power level was 40 W, for a Q-switch repetition rate of 150 kHz. At the average output power level of 20 W and 50 kHz of Q-switch repetition rate, the most energetic mode-locked pulse had an energy of 88 μJ and an estimated peak power of ~60 kW. In all the mentioned operation regimes, the measured beam parameter M2 of the fiber laser was 1.1, close to the diffraction limit. This laser has been used to pump fluoride optical fibers (ZBLAN and InF3) for supercontinuum generation in the 2-5 μm range. In ZBLAN, more than 10 W in all spectral bands have been obtained, with an output spectrum extending up to 4.4 μm. A conversion efficiency of 35%/28%/15%/8% has been measured for wavelengths longer than 2.15 μm/2.65 μm/3.1 μm/3.5 μm, respectively. For the InF3 fiber, a new design of an injection system, consisting of a large core diameter ZBLAN optical fiber and a commercial fiber-to-fiber coupler, allowed to enhance the thermo-mechanical stability of the fiber. The supercontinuum radiation generated in InF3 showed an output spectrum spanning up to around 4.7 μm with an output power level of 7 W in all spectral bands. To the best of our knowledge, this was the first Watt-level supercontinuum radiation in an InF3 fiber pumped by a singleoscillator

Compact high power fiber lasers and the vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VECSELs) are promising candidates for high power laser sources with diffraction-limited beam quality and are currently the subject of intensive research and development. Here three large mode area fiber lasers, namely, the photonic crystal fiber (PCF) laser, the multicore fiber (MCF) laser, and the multimode interference (MMI) fiber laser, as well as the VECSEL are modeled and designed.For the PCF laser, the effective refractive index and the effective core radius of the PCF are investigated using vectorial approaches and reformulated. Then, the classical step-index fiber theory is extended to PCFs, resulting in a highly efficient vectorial effective-index method for the design and analysis of PCFs. The new approach is employed to analyze the modal properties of the PCF lasers with depressed-index cores and to effectively estimate the number of guided modes for PCFs.The MCF laser, consisting of an active MCF and a passive coreless fiber, is modeled using the vectorial mode expansion method developed in this work. The results illustrate that the mode selection in the MCF laser by the coreless fiber section is determined by the MMI effect, not the Talbot effect. Based on the MMI and self-imaging in multimode fibers, the vectorial mode expansion approach is employed to design the first MMI fiber laser demonstrated experimentally.For the design and modeling of VECSELs, the optical, thermal, and structural properties of common material systems are investigated and the most reliable material models are summarized. The nanoscale heat transport theory is applied for the first time, to the best of my knowledge, to design and model VECSELs. In addition, the most accurate strain compensation approach is selected for VECSELs incorporating strained quantum wells to maintain structural stability. The design principles for the VECSEL subcavity are elaborated and applied to design a 1040nm VECSEL subcavity that has been demonstrated for high power operation of VECSELs where near diffraction-limited output over 20 W is obtained. Physical modeling of the VECSEL is also discussed and used to compare VECSEL subcavity designs on the laser level.

Extremely compact high-power fiber lasers operating at eye-safe telecom wavelength of 1.5 μm have been achieved by systematic experimental studies. Heavily Er3+-Yb3+-codoped phosphate glasses have been chosen as the host glass for our fibers and 1.5 μm lasers have been realized when pumped with 975 nm laser diodes.The first short-length cladding-pumped fiber laser with watt-level CW output power has been demonstrated by an 11-cm-long doped step-index phosphate fiber. Without active cooling, 1.5 W output power at 1535 nm has been obtained.Thermoelectric cooler has been used for heavily doped phosphate step-index fibers. A dual-end-pumped actively cooled fiber laser has generated more than 11 W CW output power at 1535 nm from an 11.9 cm long active fiber. A fully 3-dimensional thermal analysis has been performed to calculate the internal temperature distribution of the short-length fiber laser and the simulated results have been experimentally verified.Phosphate glass microstructured optical fibers (MOFs) with large active cores have been fabricated. The first demonstrated short phosphate MOF laser has generated > 3 W single-mode CW output power from an 11-cm-long fiber. The impacts of depressed-core-index and annealing upon MOF's modal property have been systematically investigated. Extremely compact high-power fiber laser is demonstrated by a heavily doped MOF laser and > 4.5 W single-mode CW output power is delivered from a 3.5 cm long fiber. Finally, a high-power single-frequency fiber laser is realized by splicing a FBG with a 3.8 cm long MOF, which achieves > 2 W single-frequency output power.

Fiber amplifiers with high power and high pulse energy are strongly in demand for both scientific research and industrial applications. Ytterbium-doped fiber has been an outstanding choice for its broad-gain bandwidth and excellent power conversion efficiencies. In this dissertation, we introduced a compact high power high pulsed energy laser system with chirally coupled core (3C) Yb-doped fibers as the gain media. Traditional standard fibers and photonic crystal fibers are not suitable for compact high power high pulse energy laser systems because of poor higher order modes (HOMs) management and complicated air-hole structure. Newly invented 3C silica fibers solve these problems. A helical side-core around the Yb-doped central core extracts the HOMs from the central core. By adjusting this chirally structure, the core of the 3C fiber can be enlarged and the transverse mode of the fiber can be single mode at certain wavelengths. To simulate the amplification process with high power high pulse energy better, a new modeling method based on a combination of the rate equations and the nonlinear Schrödinger equations is invented. The gain was calculated from rate equations and the pulse evolution was analyzed using nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The simulation provided a good guidance for building compact high power high pulse energy laser systems. To achieve high power and high pulse energy, the system is designed as a two-stage structure. The laser

In this dissertation I report the development of high power pulsed fiber laser systems. These systems utilize phosphate glass fiber for active elements, instead of the industry-standard silica fiber. Because the phosphate glass allows for much higher doping of rare-earth ions than silica fibers, much shorter phosphate fibers can be used to achieve the same gain as longer silica fibers.This single-frequency laser technology was used to develop an all-fiber actively Q-switched fiber lasers. A short cavity is used to create large spacing between longitudinal modes. Using this method, we demonstrated the first all-fiber Q-switched fiber laser in the 1 micron region.In addition to creating high peak powers with Q-switched lasers, created even higher powers using fiber amplifier systems. High power fiber lasers typically produce spectral broadening through the nonlinear effects of stimulated Raman scattering, stimulated Brullion scattering, and self-phase modulation. The thresholds for these nonlinearities scale inversely with intensity and length. Thus, we used a short phosphate fiber gain stage to reduce the length, and a large core fiber final stage to reduce intensity. In this way we were able to generate high peak power pulses while avoiding visible nonlinearities, and keeping a narrow bandwidth.The immediate goal of developing these high power fiber laser systems was to generate narrowband terahertz radiation. Two different wavelengths were combined into the final amplifier stage at orthogonal polarizations. These were collimated and directed into a GaSe crystal, which has a very high figure of merit for THz generation. The two wavelengths combined in the crystal through the process of nonlinear difference frequency generation. This produced a narrowband beam of THz pulses, at higher powers than previous narrowband THz pulses produced by eyesafe fiber lasers.

High-power, stable, high-repetition-rate, picosecond ultraviolet (UV) sources are of crucial importance for a variety of applications, such as atmospheric sensing, spectroscopy or optical data storage. Further, precise material processing or laser patterning requires high energy sources with ultrashort pulses for increased accuracy. Nonlinear, single-pass, frequency conversion sources present a highly effective and simplified approach to cover the UV spectral regions inaccessible to lasers, offering potential solutions for many of the applications mentioned above. The development of high-average-power UV sources through third- and fourth-harmonic generation (THG and FHG, respectively) of 1064 nm fiber lasers in nonlinear crystals is of particular importance due to their compact footprint, high efficiency, long lifetime, excellent stability and cost-effective design. The features of these sources are strongly dependent on the choice of the nonlinear crystal. For UV generation, this choice is particularly challenging when low-intensity picosecond pulses at high repetition rates are involved. Borate-based birefringent crystals are the most viable candidates for UV generation in the absence of suitable periodically-poled nonlinear materials, and are readily available. This thesis presents the development of High-power, stable, high-repetition-rate, picosecond ultraviolet (UV) sources are of crucial importance for a variety of applications, such as atmospheric sensing, spectroscopy or optical data storage. Further, precise material processing or laser patterning requires high energy sources with ultrashort pulses for increased accuracy. Nonlinear, single-pass, frequency conversion sources present a highly effective and simplified approach to cover the UV spectral regions inaccessible to lasers, offering potential solutions for many of the applications mentioned above. The development of high-average-power UV sources through third- and fourth-harmonic generation (THG and FHG, respectively) of 1064 nm fiber lasers in nonlinear crystals is of particular importance due to their compact footprint, high efficiency, long lifetime, excellent stability and cost-effective design. The features of these sources are strongly dependent on the choice of the nonlinear crystal. For UV generation, this choice is particularly challenging when low-intensity picosecond pulses at high repetition rates are involved. Borate-based birefringent crystals are the most viable candidates for UV generation in the absence of suitable periodically-poled nonlinear materials, and are readily available. This thesis presents the degenerating the second- and third-harmonic of a high-power, picosecond Yb-fiber laser at 1064 nm, delivering excellent stability and high quality beam profile. Moreover, efforts to refine the THG efficiency led to a successful improvement of the aforementioned fiber-based source at 355 nm. This was achieved by deploying a single-pass second-harmonic generation (SHG) under noncritical phase-matching in LiB3O5 (LBO) crystal, which considerably enhanced the output power and improved the overall performance with regard to stability and beam quality in the green, that are technologically important for a diverse range of technological applications. The obtained results at 355 nm confirm the viability of BIBO as a highly attractive material for efficient generation of low-intensity, high-average-power picosecond pulses in the UV. Further, we demonstrated a fiber-based high-repetition-rate UV source at 266 nm based on single-pass FHG in BBO crystal in a simple and practical design. Using direct single-pass SHG of 1064 nm in LBO as a pump source for the BBO crystal, 1.7 W of output power at 266 nm was generated in a high beam quality with excellent stability and spectral features. This compact and robust design represents the highest single-pass efficiency and average power of a MHz-repetition-rate picoseconds UV source at 266 nm ever demonstrated.
Las fuentes estables de luz pulsada en el ultravioleta (UV) en el régimen de picosegundos (ps) con altas frecuencias de repetición y de alta potencia juegan un papel crucial en gran cantidad de aplicaciones. Alguno ejemplos son la detección atmosférica de gases, técnicas de espectroscopia o el almacenamiento óptico de datos. Además, las nuevas técnicas de procesado de materiales y de grabado láser requieren estas fuentes de pulsos ultracortos de alta potencia para conseguir los más altos niveles de precisión. En este sentido, las fuentes no lineales de radiación basadas en la conversión de frecuencias de paso único presentan las mejores características para cubrir dicha región espectral a día de hoy inaccesible a los láseres convencionales, ofreciendo un amplio abanico de soluciones para todas las aplicaciones anteriormente mencionadas. El desarrollo de estas fuentes de luz de alta potencia basadas en la generación del tercer y cuarto armónico (THG y FHG del inglés) de láseres de fibra de 1064 nm son de gran interés gracias a su compacto diseño, alta eficiencia, larga vida, excelente estabilidad y buena relación calidad-precio. Las características de estas fuentes están determinadas por la elección del cristal no lineal que se utilice. La generación de radiación UV presenta particulares dificultades cuando se trata de pulsos de ps a baja intensidad a altas frecuencias de repetición. En estos casos, los cristales birrefringentes de la familia de los boratos son los mejores candidatos para la generación de esta radiación dada la ausencia de materiales no lineales periódicamente polarizados adecuados para este fin. En esta tesis se presenta el desarrollo de varias fuentes de UV de alta potencia basadas en la conversión de frecuencias, empleando diferentes configuraciones experimentales así como distintos cristales no lineales, construyendo diseños compactos, fiables y de bajo coste. En concreto, se escogieron los cristales relativamente nuevos, ß-BaB2O4 (BBO) y BiB3O6, (BIBO), para nuestras fuentes de UV. Estos presentan mejoras sustanciales en las propiedades ópticas, térmicas y de ajuste de fases para THG y FHG. Por otro lado, en esta tesis se utilizó un láser de fibra de iterbio a 1064 nm como fuente de bombeo. Primeramente, se demostró una nueva fuente de UV de 355 nm comprendida por dos etapas en un innovador esquema multicristal. Este incluye dos cristales BIBO que amplifican eficientemente los efectos inducidos por su propia birrefringencia. Esta fuente generó simultáneamente el segundo y tercer armónico de un láser de fibra de iterbio a 1064 nm de alta potencia, presentando una excelente estabilidad con un perfil en el haz de alta calidad. En segundo lugar, gracias a los esfuerzos para incrementar la eficiencia del THG se obtuvieron mejoras sustanciales respecto a la anterior fuente de UV de 355 nm. La generación del segundo armónico (SHG del inglés) se realizó implementando un cristal LiB3O5 (LBO), con ajuste de fases no crítico de paso único y por ello se incrementó la potencia y se mejoraró la estabilidad y la calidad del haz de 532 nm. Posteriormente se procedió a sumar las frecuencias ¿1064 nm y 532 nm¿, obteniendo unos resultados a 355 nm que confirman la viabilidad del BIBO como un excelente material para generar eficientemente pulsos de ps de baja intensidad en el UV. Por último, también demostramos una fuente de radiación de 266 nm con alta frecuencia de repetición basado en FHG de paso único usando un cristal BBO mediante un diseño simple y práctico. Utilizando el SHG de 1064 nm de paso único generado en un cristal LBO como fuente de bombeo para el cristal BBO, pudimos generar hasta 1.7 W de potencia de salida a 266 nm, con un haz de gran calidad y excelentes características espectrales y de estabilidad. Este diseño compacto y robusto presenta la mayor eficiencia de paso único y potencia media en una fuente de 266 nm de ps con frecuencia de repetición de MHz jamás demostrada
Les fonts estables de llum polsada en l'ultraviolat (UV) en el règim de picosegons amb altes freqüències de repetició i d'alta potència, juguen un paper crucial en gran quantitat d'aplicacions. Algun d'aquests exemples són la detecció atmosfèrica de gasos, tècniques d'espectroscòpia o l'emmagatzemat òptic de dades. A més a més, les noves tècniques de processat de materials i de gravat làser requereixen aquestes fonts de polsos ultracurts d'alta potència per aconseguir els més alts nivells de precisió. En aquest sentit, les fonts de radiació no lineal basades en la conversió de freqüències de pas únic presenten les millors característiques per cobrir aquesta regió espectral a dia d'avui inaccessible als làsers convencionals, oferint un ampli ventall de solucions per totes les aplicacions anteriorment esmentades. El desenvolupament d'aquestes fonts de llum d'alta potència basades en la generació del tercer i quart harmònic (THG i FHG per les seves sigles en anglès) del làser de fibra de 1064 nm són de gran interès gràcies al seu compacte disseny, alta eficiència, llarga vida, excel·lent estabilitat i bona relació qualitat-preu. Les característiques d'aquestes fonts estan fortament determinades per l'elecció del cristall no lineal que s'utilitzi. La generació de radiació UV presenta particulars dificultats quan es tracta de polsos de picosegons a baixa intensitat amb altes freqüències de repetició. En aquests casos, els cristalls birefringents de la família dels borats són els candidats més atractius per la generació d'aquesta radiació donada l'absència de materials no lineals periòdicament polaritzats adequats per aquesta finalitat. En aquesta tesi es presenta el desenvolupament de diverses fonts d'UV d'alta potència basades en la conversió de freqüències, emprant diferents configuracions experimentals així com diferents cristalls no lineals, construint dissenys compactes, fiables i de baix cost. En concret, es van escollir els cristalls relativament nous, β-BaB2O4 (BBO) i BiB3O6, (BIBO), per les nostres fonts d'UV. Aquests presenten millores substancials pel que fa a les propietats òptiques, tèrmiques i d'ajust de fases per THG i FHG. D'altra banda, en els treballs presentats en aquesta tesi es va utilitzar un làser de fibra d'iterbi a 1064 nm com a font de bombeig. En primer lloc, es va demostrar una nova font d'UV de 355 nm que consta de dues etapes en un simple i innovador esquema multi-cristall. Aquest inclou dos cristalls BIBO que amplifiquen eficientment els efectes induïts per la seva pròpia birefringència. Aquesta font va generar simultàniament el segon i tercer harmònic d'un làser de fibra d'iterbi a 1064 nm d'alta potència, presentant una excel·lent estabilitat amb un perfil al feix d'alta qualitat. A més a més, es van fer servir al màxim les tècniques per un òptim enfocament i el consegüent augment de l'eficiència. En segon lloc, els esforços per incrementar l'eficiència del THG van resultar en millores substancials respecte l'anterior font d'UV de 355 nm. La generació del segon harmònic (SHG per les seves sigles en anglès) es va realitzar mitjançant la implementació d'un cristall LiB3O5 (LBO), que presenta un ajust de fases no crític de pas únic. Gràcies a aquesta acció, es va realçar la potència i es van millorar les característiques de sortida de la font com l'estabilitat i la qualitat del feix de 532 nm, les quals són importants per diverses aplicacions tecnològiques. Posteriorment es va procedir, com en el cas anterior, a sumar les freqüències –1064 nm i 532 nm–, obtenint uns resultats a 355 nm que confirmen la viabilitat del BIBO com un excel·lent material per generar eficientment polsos de picosegons de baixa intensitat en el UV. Per últim, també vam demostrar una font de radiació de 266 nm amb un alta freqüència de repetició basat en FHG de pas únic utilitzant un cristall BBO mitjançant un disseny simple i pràctic. Utilitzant el SHG de 1064 nm de pas únic generat en un cristall LBO com a font de bombeig per el cristall BBO, va poder generar fins a 1.7 W de potència de sortida a 266 nm, presentant un feix de gran qualitat amb unes excel·lents característiques espectrals i d'estabilitat. Aquest disseny és compacte i robust, presenta la major eficàcia de pas únic i potència mitja en una font de 266 nm de picosegons amb freqüència de repetició de MHz mai demostrada fins ara.

Les systèmes laser en fibre optique de verre fluoré se sont placés en tête de file pour la génération de lumière cohérente dans l’infrarouge moyen, de 2 à 5 μm. En particulier, les lasers à fibre opérant à 3 μm ont attiré une attention considérable puisqu’ils permettent le développement d’applications en spectroscopie, en contre-mesure militaire et en médecine. De ce fait, ces lasers ont connu des progrès considérables en termes de puissance, de qualité de faisceau, de fiabilité et de compacité dans la dernière décennie. Cette thèse s’inscrit dans cette démarche d’accroissement des performances des lasers à fibre infrarouges opérant à 3 μm. Ainsi, elle présente différents systèmes laser en fibre de verre fluoré et détaille les composants tout-fibre qui ont permis d’atteindre des records d’efficacité énergétique, de puissance et d’énergie par impulsion.Trois types de sources laser, chacune ayant établi un record de performance, ont été investiguées. Tout d’abord, une efficacité laser record de 50% a été obtenue à partir d’un laser à fibre opérant à 2.8 μm en utilisant le principe de cascade laser à 2.8 et 1.6 μm. Ensuite, un amplificateur à fibre, basé sur des fibres dopées à l’ion erbium et aux ions holmium et praséodyme, a permis d’amplifier des impulsions picosecondes à 3 μm d’une source laser à l’état solide pour obtenir une énergie par impulsion (122 μJ) et une puissance moyenne (2.45 W) records. Finalement, une cavité laser tout-fibre dopée à l’ion erbium opérant autour de 3 μm, dépourvue d’épissures fusionnées, a mené à la démonstration d’une puissance laser recordde 41.6 W. D’autre part, cette thèse a ciblé différents obstacles limitant l’accroissement de la puissance des lasers à fibre opérant à 3 μm, et a permis d’identifier des pistes de solutions pour pallier ces limitations. En l’occurrence, la photodégradation de l’extrémité de sortie des lasers à fibre à 3 μm, causée par la diffusion de la vapeur d’eau ambiante, limite la durée de vie et la puissance maximale de ce type de laser. Ainsi, le dernier volet de cette thèse a été consacré à l’étude expérimentale de la photodégradation d’embouts de protection à base de verre fluoré ou d’oxyde. Cette étude a mené au développement d’une nouvelle méthode permettant d’inhiber la diffusion de la vapeur d’eau dans les embouts de protection. Cette thèse représente une avancée majeure dans le contexte de l’accroissement de la puissance des sources laser en fibre optique opérant à 3 μm et démontre leur potentiel indéniable pour remplacer d’autres types de lasers dans une multitude d’applications.
Fluoride fiber laser technology is one of the noteworthy tools for generating coherent mid-infrared signal between 2 to 5 μm that has made outstanding progress over the last decade interms of compactness, reliability, high beam quality, and output power. In the mid-infrared spectral region, laser emission near 3 μm is crucial for many applications such as spectroscopy, counter measures and medicine. In addition, there has always been an increasing demand for higher laser output parameters to open new doors for potential applications.This dissertation presents a series of experimental studies of fluoride fiber laser systems, either in continuous wave or pulsed regime, and of their critical in-fiber components to achieve a laser emission with high slope efficiency, output power, and pulse energy near 3 μm. During this PhD project, three main 3 μm-class fluoride fiber laser sources, each representing at least one record output parameter in their own category, have been investigated. First, the highest optical-to-optical efficiency (50%) at 2.8 μm was achieved from a diode-pumped fiber laser cavity by cascaded transitions of 2.8 μm and 1.6 μm in a low-doped erbium fluoride fiber. Then, active media based on erbium and holmium/praseodymium zirconium fluoride fibers seeded by a sub-ns solid-state laser enabled to achieve highest pulse energy (122μJ)and average power (2.45 W) from a picosecond fiber laser amplifier operating near 3 μm. Lastly, the highest average power 3 μm-class laser (41.6 W) has been demonstrated by using asplice-less heavily erbium-doped fluoride fiber medium. The major problems during the high-power laser operation have been investigated and potential solutions were proposed. The most common problem of all the high-power 3 μm fiber laser demonstrations is the degradation of the fiber tips due to OH migration, which limits the output power and can lead to catastrophic failures. Therefore, in the last part of the PhD project, the performance of fluoride- and oxide-based endcap components under high-power 3 μm laser emission has been experimentally investigated and a novel endcapping method was proposed for suppressing the OH migration. Experimental studies in this PhD project represents a significant advance for further power scaling of 3 μm fluoride fiber laser sources and shows their potential to replace other laser technologies.

High power thulium fiber lasers are useful for a number of applications in both continuous-wave and pulsed operating regimes. The use of thulium as a dopant has recently gained interest due to its large bandwidth, possibility of high efficiency, possibility of high power and long wavelength ~1.8 – 2.1 [micro]m. The longer emission wavelength of Tm-doped fiber lasers compared to Yb- and/or Er-doped fiber lasers creates the possibility for higher peak power operation due to the larger nonlinear thresholds and reduced nonlinear phase accumulation. One primary interest in Tm-doped fiber lasers has been to scale to high average powers; however, the thermal and mechanical constraints of the fiber limit the average power out of a single-fiber aperture. One method to overcome the constraints of a single laser aperture is to spectrally combine the output from multiple lasers operating with different wavelengths into a single beam. In this thesis, results will be presented on the development of three polarized 100 W level laser systems that were wavelength stabilized for SBC. In addition to the development of the laser channels, the beams were combined using bandpass filters to achieve a single near diffraction-limited output. Concurrently, with the development of high average power systems there is an increasing interest in femotosecond pulse generation and amplification using Tm- doped fiber lasers. High peak power sources operating near 2 [micro]m have the potential to be efficient pump sources to generate mid-infrared light through supercontinuum generation or optical parametric oscillators. This thesis focuses on the development of a laser system utilizing chirped pulse amplification (CPA) to achieve record level energies and peak powers for ultrashort pulses in Tm-doped fiber. A mode-locked oscillator was built to generate femtosecond pulses operating with pJ energy. Pulses generated in the mode-locked oscillator were limited to low energies and contained spectral modulation due to the mode-locking mechanism, therefore, a Raman-soliton self-frequency shift (Raman-SSFS) amplifier was built to amplify pulses, decrease the pulse duration, and spectrally clean pulses. These pulses were amplified using chirped pulse amplification (CPA) in which, limiting factors for amplification were examined and a high peak power system was built. The primary limiting factors of CPA in fibers include the nonlinear phase accumulation, primarily through self-phase modulation (SPM), and gain narrowing. Gain narrowing was examined by temporally stretching pulses in a highly nonlinear fiber that both stretched the pulse duration and broadened the spectrum. A high peak power CPA system amplified pulses to 1 [micro]J energy with 300 fs compressed pulses, corresponding to a peak power >3 MW. High peak power pulses were coupled into highly nonlinear fibers to generate supercontinuum.
Ph.D.
Doctorate
Optics and Photonics
Optics and Photonics
Optics

In this dissertation, high-power ytterbium-doped fiber amplifiers designed with advanced waveguide concepts are characterized and power scaled. Fiber waveguides utilizing cladding microstructures to achieve wave guidance via the photonic bandgap (PBG) effect and a combination of PBG and modified total internal reflection (MTIR) have been proposed as viable single-mode waveguides. Such novel structures allow larger core diameters (>35 μm diameters) than conventional step-index fibers while still maintaining near-diffraction limited beam quality. These microstructured fibers are demonstrated as robust single-mode waveguides at low powers and are power scaled to realize the thermal power limits of the structure. Here above a certain power threshold, these coiled few-mode fibers have been shown to be limited by modal instability (MI); where energy is dynamically transferred between the fundamental mode and higher-order modes. Nonlinear effects such as stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) are also studied in these fiber waveguides as part of this dissertation. Suppressing SBS is critical towards achieving narrow optical bandwidths (linewidths) necessary for efficient fiber amplifier beam combining. Towards that end, new effects that favorably reduce acoustic wave dispersion to increase the SBS threshold are discovered and reported. The first advanced waveguide examined is a Yb-doped 50/400 µm diameter core/clad PBGF. The PBGF is power scaled with a single-frequency 1064 nm seed to an MI-limited 410 W with 79% optical-to-optical efficiency and near-diffraction limited beam quality (M-Squared < 1.25) before MI onset. To this author's knowledge, this represents 2.4x improvement in power output from a PBGF amplifier without consideration for linewidth and a 16x improvement in single-frequency power output from a PBGF amplifier. During power scaling of the PBGF, a remarkably low Brillouin response was elicited from the fiber even when the ultra large diameter 50 µm core is accounted for in the SBS threshold equation. Subsequent interrogation of the Brillouin response in a pump probe Brillouin gain spectrum diagnostic estimated a Brillouin gain coefficient, gB, of 0.62E-11 m/W; which is 4x reduced from standard silica-based fiber. A finite element numerical model that solves the inhomogenous Helmholtz equation that governs the acoustic and optical coupling in SBS is utilized to verify experimental results with an estimated gB = 0.68E-11 m/W. Consequently, a novel SBS-suppression mechanism based on inclusion of sub-optical wavelength acoustic features in the core is proposed. The second advanced waveguide analyzed is a 35/350 µm diameter core/clad fiber that achieved wave guidance via both PBG and MTIR, and is referred to as a hybrid fiber. The waveguide benefits mutually from the amenable properties of PBG and MTIR wave guidance because robust single-mode propagation with minimal confinement loss is assured due to MTIR effects, and the waveguide spectrally filters unwanted wavelengths via the PBG effect. The waveguide employs annular Yb-doped gain tailoring to reduce thermal effects and mitigate MI. Moreover, it is designed to suppress Raman processes for a 1064 nm signal by attenuating wavelengths > 1110 nm via the PBG effect. When seeded with a 1064 nm signal deterministically broadened to ~1 GHz, the hybrid fiber was power scaled to a MI-limited 820 W with 78% optical-to-optical efficiency and near diffraction limited beam quality of M_Squared ~1.2 before MI onset. This represents a 14x improvement in power output from a hybrid fiber, and demonstrates that this type of fiber amplifier is a quality candidate for further power scaling for beam combining.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2014.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 51-54).
Two novel laser systems for ultrafast applications have been designed and built. For the seeding of a high energy cryogenically cooled Yb:YLF laser, a novel 1018 nm fiber laser system is demonstrated. It produces >35 nJ pulse energy and 5 nm spectral bandwidth. A double-cladd amplifier and an appropriate filter to optimize the system for the amplifier seeding application were employed. This is the highest pulse energy with narrow spectrum at 1018 nm. For a photonic analog-to-digital conversion system operating at 1250 nm, a fiber laser system generating 4 W of femtosecond Cherenkov radiation at that wavelength was built. The characteristics of the Cherenkov radiation were well studied.
by Hongyu Yang.
S.M.

Allier de fortes puissances moyennes et crêtes donne accès à un champ applicatif très large pour un système laser ultrarapide. Une technique qui s’est avérée capable de satisfaire ces exigences est la combinaison cohérente de faisceaux (CBC). Elle permet de séparer spatialement les faisceaux avant l’amplification pour les recombiner ensuite d’une manière cohérente en un unique faisceau. Afin d’obtenir une recombinaison efficace, les propriétés spatiales et spectrales de tous les faisceaux doivent être parfaitement en accord.Pour des applications comme l’accélération de particules, le recours à plusieurs milliers de fibres doit être envisagé. Il est donc nécessaire d’étudier des architectures CBC fortement évolutives en termes de canaux amplificateurs.Le projet XCAN vise à une première démonstration d’un tel système en réalisant la combinaison cohérente de 61 fibres amplificatrices. Afin d’étudier les défis scientifiques et techniques d’une telle architecture, une version de taille réduite comprenant sept fibres a été mise en place.La conception et la réalisation de ce prototype sont le sujet de cette thèse.Dans un premier temps, des simulations ont été effectués afin d’estimer les désaccords tolérables entre les propriétés spatiales et spectrales des différents faisceaux.Basé sur ce travail de modélisation, un système laser de combinaison cohérente de sept fibres a été ensuite assemblé et caractérisé. Les résultats obtenus sont très prometteurs et montrent que notre architecture est bien adaptée pour accueillir les 61 fibres du démonstrateur final XCAN
Future applications of high power ultrafast laser systems require simultaneously high average and peak powers. A technique which has proved to be capable of meeting these demands is coherent beam combining (CBC).In this technique, the beam is spatially split prior to amplification, and coherently recombined in one single beam afterwards. In order to achieve an efficient recombination, the spatial and spectral properties of all beams need to be perfectly matched.For applications such as particle acceleration, the coherent combining of several thousands of fibers needs to be considered. It is thus necessary to investigate highly scalable CBC architectures.The XCAN project aims at a first demonstration of such a scalable setup by coherently combining 61 fiber amplifiers. In order to study the scientific and technical challenges of such a system, a downscaled version consisting of seven fibers has been implemented.The design and characterization of this prototype is the subject of this thesis.As a starting point, numerical simulations have been performed in order to estimate the maximum tolerable mismatches between the spatial and spectral properties of the beams.Based on this modeling work, a seven fiber CBC system has been assembled and characterized. The obtained results are very promising and imply that our setup is well suited for the accommodation of all 61 fibers of the final XCAN demonstrator

Fiber lasers can be considered a revolutionary technology in the laser field thanks to their unique properties, such as high efficiency, simplicity, compactness and robustness. These features have allowed in the last ten years their outstanding growth both in scientific and industrial applications, eroding the market share of traditional laser sources like solid-state and gas lasers. Fiber lasers power scaling to the kilowatt range is now well established and, thanks to the fiber confinement, excellent output beam quality can be obtained, with a remarkable benefit for applications. Today, high power laser sources are based on ytterbium doped, large mode area fibers because ytterbium can be efficiently pumped in the range 915nm − 975nm (where pump sources are widely available), generating laser action at 1060nm − 1090nm. With this configuration, impressive power scaling has been demonstrated in the last few years. This Ph.D. thesis has been focused on the design and development of high power fiber lasers for a wide range of industrial applications, like cutting, wending, drilling and micro-machining. Both continuous and pulse wave fiber lasers have been demonstrated and particular attention has been devoted to the development of critical technological de-vices like fused fibers combiner, strategic components either for pump light coupling into the laser active fiber (pump combiner) and for power scaling through the beam combining of several fibers lasers (signal combiner). Ytterbium doped fiber lasers have been developed during the Ph.D activity and, in particular, after a theoretical analysis devoted to the modeling of fiber laser cavities and amplifiers, a continuous wave fiber laser and two pulsed laser systems have been demonstrated. The CW fiber laser has been developed with a modular approach: 7 laser modules, capable of emitting hundreds of Watts each, have been coupled together thanks to a fused fiber combiner. A multi-kilowatts output power has been demonstrated. The photo-darkening effect in the active fiber of the laser modules has also been exper-imentally investigated. The pulsed architectures are instead a Q-switched MOPA and a Seed MOPA fiber lasers. The first system is based on a fiber laser oscillator operating in the Q-switching regime, followed by a power amplifier. This laser is capable of delivering 100ns pulses with 10W average power (2kW maximum peak power). The Seed MOPA consists instead of a current modulated laser diode followed by two amplification stages; 2W output average power with adjustable pulse widths from 10 to 100ns has been demonstrated. In the last part of the activity, a preliminary version of a thulium doped fiber laser emitting at about 2000nm (i.e. in the so-called eye-safe region) has been developed. The laser is a Seed MOPA system that has been tested in cw regime but in the near future the pulsed behavior will be investigated.

Rare-earth doped silica fibers have been used for many years to create continuous-wave lasers, and Er-doped fiber amplifiers are now widely used in telecommunications. In addition, cladding pumped fiber allows the efficient conversion of multimode radiation from high power, low cost, broad-stripe semiconductor laser diodes into the single-mode emission of fiber lasers. With its broad gain bandwidth and high optical conversion efficiency, Yb-doped silica fiber represents an attractive medium for the generation and amplification of high energy ultrashort optical pulses. However, these potential advantages of Yb-doped silica fiber as a gain and nonlinear medium for mode-locked lasers and ultrashort pulse amplifiers have been less well studied, and it was not until 1999 that significant research interest first appeared in Yb-fiber chirp pulse amplifier (CPA) systems. This thesis describes the development of the first practical and stable, femtosecond, Yb-fiber oscillator, and of an Yb-fiber amplifier based CPA system (pulses ~10 μJ, <500 fs). Novel aspects of the system include the use of a high extinction ratio Electro-Optic modulator for pulse selection, and the development of a compact chirped-fiber-Bragg-grating (CFBG) pulse stretcher that provides both 2nd and 3rd order chirp compensation. Recently published theoretical results have demonstrated that the asymptotic solution for ultrashort pulses in a high gain fiber amplifier is a linearly chirped pulse, which can therefore be recompressed with a standard grating compressor. This thesis reports the first experimental comparison of nonlinear pulse evolution towards the asymptotic form using a cascaded amplifier system. The "direct amplification" system was constructed by removing the CPA stretcher grating, which also enabled the use of a less dispersive and more compact compressor. Further system development should lead to the generation of ultrashort pulses at high average power levels and >100 kHz repetition rates. Holey fiber (HF) is a recently developed technology that uses rings of air holes around a solid core to confine the optical field by average-index effects. Fibers are highly suitable for applications using nonlinear optics because of the tightly confined mode and long interaction lengths. The increased mode confinement possible using HF means that small-core, high air-fill fraction HF are an attractive nonlinear medium. Furthermore, the high index contrast in such fibers can create a strong (anomalous) waveguide contribution to the dispersion, and such HFs can have anomalous dispersion at wavelengths <1.3 μm, where conventional fiber has normal dispersion. Therefore HFs can support solitons in new wavelength bands. This thesis reports the first demonstration of linear dispersion compensation, soliton transmission, and visible continuum generation seeded by a 1.06 μm Yb-fiber source. In addition, an experimental study is reported that used HF seeded from a Ti:Sapphire laser to generate continuum in distinct transverse spatial modes of a HF. Numerical simulations suggested that the observed enhancement in UV generation from a higher order mode could be due to differences in the dispersion profiles of the fundamental and higher order transverse modes. Finally, the development of a novel source of <200 fs pulses, continuously tuneable in wavelength from 1.06-1.33 μm, based on the soliton self-frequency-shift principle, is described. The source was constructed from a diode-pumped Yb-doped HF amplifier, and the Yb-fiber oscillator described above. The diode pump power controlled the output wavelength.

Due to the recent renewal in interest in fiber laser technology, continuous wave (c.w.) laser technology using rare-earth doped silica fibers has developed rapidly in the past few years. In the late 80s, Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifiers were commercialised and became widely used in the telecommunications industry. Yb-doped silica fiber is particularly attractive as its broad gain bandwidth and high optical efficiency make it a preferred choice for both pulsed and c.w. high power fiber laser and amplifier applications. With the advent of cladding pump technology, low cost, high power broad-stripe semiconductor laser diodes with multimoded radiation could be efficiently used to produce high power Yb-doped silica fiber lasers with either single (~ 1 kW) or multimode (~ 10 kW) emission. Finally, the development and demonstration of a novel gain switched laser diode operating at 1 µm is reported. Using this gain switched laser diode as a seed source; the output gain switched pulses were compressed to 20 ps using a fiber compressor and thereafter amplified to achieve an output average power of 11.1 W at 1 GHz repetition rate using an YDFA cascade. Additional novel work was carried out later where a linearly dispersive CFBG was used to compress the pulses to 16.6 ps. These pulses were later amplified to average powers of 321 W at 1 GHz. This we believe is the highest output power ever achieved for a short pulse fiber laser system.

The objective of this dissertation is to generate high power ultrashort optical pulses from an all-semiconductor mode-locked laser system. The limitations of semiconductor optical amplifier in high energy, ultrashort pulse amplification are reviewed. A method to overcome the fundamental limit of small stored energy inside semiconductor optical amplifier called "eXtreme Chirped Pulse Amplification (X-CPA)" is proposed and studied theoretically and experimentally. The key benefits of the concept of X-CPA are addressed. Based on theoretical and experimental study, an all-semiconductor mode-locked X-CPA system consisting of a mode-locked master oscillator, an optical pulse pre-stretcher, a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) pulse picker, an extreme pulse stretcher/compressor, cascaded optical amplifiers, and a bulk grating compressor is successfully demonstrated and generates >kW record peak power. A potential candidate for generating high average power from an X-CPA system, novel grating coupled surface emitting semiconductor laser (GCSEL) devices, are studied experimentally. The first demonstration of mode-locking with GCSELs and associated amplification characteristics of grating coupled surface emitting SOAs will be presented. In an effort to go beyond the record setting results of the X-CPA system, a passive optical cavity amplification technique in conjunction with the X-CPA system is constructed, and studied experimentally and theoretically.
Ph.D.
Optics and Photonics
Optics

In this thesis I report experimental studies toward developing versatile, compact, and reliable ultrafast sources in the 1.5 micron wavelength region, and their power scalability. The first part of the thesis reports on the development of a stable all-fiberized wavelength-tunable frequency-shifted feedback (FSF) picosecond laser. Stability of the passive mode-locking mechanism is achieved by combining the effects of nonlinear polarization evolution and a frequency shifting mechanism carried out by an acousto-optic modulator. The novel configuration generates pulses in the range of ~ 34 to 66 ps, depending on the value of the frequency shift applied in the cavity. The cavity allows for continuous wavelength-tuning over 30 nm of the erbium gain bandwidth via a fiberized tunable filter. The stability of the laser cavity allows pulse analysis as a function of different parameters of the laser cavity. Additional extensive numerical analysis, combined with the experimental results, provide novel insights for understanding the dynamics of FSF lasers in the mode-locking regime, which have not been addressed in the literature before. The second part of the thesis reports on the development of a versatile, stable, compact mode-locked fibre laser using nonlinear polarization evolution and a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror(SESAM). The novel cavity can generate pulses with widths between ~ 2.7 and 11 ps over 25 nm of erbium gain bandwidth. This is achieved by integrating in the cavity state-of-the-art optical filters. The performance of this laser is compared to that of the FSF laser in terms of pulse energy, amplitude noise, timing jitter and power scaling. The third part of the thesis reports on the direct amplification of a mode-locked ~ 10 picosecond bandwidth-tunable laser source that I made by means of large-mode area (LMA) erbium-ytterbium co-doped and erbium-doped fibres. While cladding pumping amplification schemes have become a standard option for pulse amplification in the 1.5 μm region, core-pumped amplification in LMA erbium-doped fibres has been less studied. In this thesis, in addition to the amplification of picosecond pulses in an erbiumytterbium co-doped fibre; I present a novel scheme that uses a hybrid co-propagation core-pumped (1480 nm) and counter-propagation cladding-pumped (980 nm) scheme, which compensates for the low cladding absorption at 980 nm of the erbium-doped fibre. Picosecond pulses are amplified up to 1.5 W with peak powers exceeding 11 kW. The last part of this thesis reports on the study of a stable operating regime found in passive mode-locked lasers called noise-like pulses, which can generate broadband spectra directly from the main oscillator. Here, I report the record of a 135-nm bandwidth lineraly polarized noise-like pulse generation in an erbium-doped fibre laser by exploiting the birefringence of the cavity and the Raman gain of a highly nonlinear fibre (HNLF). Noise characterization of the source is carried out and compared to other commercial broadband sources in order to see its applicability in areas such as optical coherence tomography.

In this dissertation, an all-fiber-based single frequency nanosecond pulsed laser system at ~ 1918.4 nm in master-oscillator-power-amplifier (MOPA) configuration is present. The nanosecond pulse seed is achieved by directly modulating a continuous wave (CW) single frequency fiber laser using a fast electro-optical modulator (EOM) driven by an arbitrary waveform generator (AWG). One piece of single mode, large core, polarization-maintaining (PM) highly thulium-doped (Tm-doped) germanate glass fiber (LC-TGF) is used to boost the pulse power and pulse energy of these modulated pulses in the final power amplifier. This laser system can work in both high power and high energy regime: in high power regime, to the best of our knowledge, the highest average power 16 W and peak power 78.1 kW are achieved for single frequency transform-limited ~2.0 ns pulses at 500 kHz and 100 kHz repetition rate, respectively: In high energy regime, nearly 1 mJ and half mJ pulse energy is obtained for ~15 ns pulses at 1 kHz repetition rate and 5 kHz repetition rate, respectively. Theoretical modeling of the large-core highly Tm-doped germanate glass double-cladding fiber amplifier (LC-TG-DC-FA) is also present for 2&mum nanosecond pulse amplification. A good agreement between the theoretical and experimental results is achieved. The model can simulate the evolution of pump power, signal energy, pulse shape and the amplified stimulated emission (ASE) in the amplifier. It can also be utilized to investigate the dependence of the stored energy in the LC-TGF on the pump power, seed energy and repetition rate, which can be used to design and optimize the LC-TG-DC-FA to achieve higher pulse energy and average power. Two channel of high energy nanosecond pulses (at 1918.4 nm and 1938 nm) are utilized to generate THz wave in a quasi-phase-matched (QPM) gallium arsenide (GaAs) based on difference frequency generation. THz wave with ~ 5.4μW average power and ~18 mW peak power has been achieved. Besides, one model is built to simulate a singly resonated THz parametric oscillator. The threshold, the dependence of output THz energy on pump energy has been investigated through this model. One pump enhanced THz parametric oscillator has been proposed. The enhancement factor of the nanosecond pulses in a bow-tie ring cavity has been calculated for different pulse duration, cavity length and the transmission of the coupler. And the laser resonances in the ring cavity have been observed by using a piezo to periodically adjust the cavity length. We also build an all-fiber thulium-doped wavelength tunable mode-locked laser operating near 2&mum. Reliable self-starting mode locking over a large tuning range (>50 nm) using fiber taper based carbon nanotube (FTCNT) saturable absorber (SA) is observed. Spectral tuning is achieved by stretching another fiber taper. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of an all-fiber wavelength tunable mode-locked laser near 2&mum.

High-power, continuous-wave (cw), mid-infrared (mid-IR) laser sources are of interest for variety of applications such as trace gas detection and remote sensing, which require broad spectral coverage to address the most prominent absorption features of a wide range of molecular species particularly in the mid-IR fingerprint region. On the other hand, surgical applications require high energy sources with unique pulse structure at specific wavelength in the mid-IR ranging from 6-6.5 m. Optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) offer potential sources for all the above applications. The output wavelengths of a singly-resonant oscillator (SRO) can be coarsely tuned over wide ranges through the adjustment of the nonlinear crystal temperature, phase-matching angle or, in the case of quasi-phase-matched (QPM) the first time. The high-energy CSP OPO marked the first demonstration of a compact, high-repetition-rate OPO synchronously pumped by a master oscillator power amplifier system at 1064 nm, generating an milli-joule pulses in the 6-6.5 m spectral range, which is technologically important for surgical applications. Additionally, we also demonstrated a fiber-based-green source at 532 nm, based on single-pass second harmonic generation (SHG) in MgO:sPPLT, as an alternative pump source for Ti:sapphire laser, pointing towards the future, compact fiber-laser pumped Ti:sapphire lasers. Further efforts to improve the SHG efficiency led to the development of a novel multi-crystal scheme, enabling single-pass SHG efficiency as high as 56%. This generic technique is simple and can be implemented at any wavelength. materials, the QPM grating period. The combination of SRO with a tunable pump laser allows the development of uniquely flexible and rapidly tunable class of mid-IR sources. In this thesis we have demonstrated several mid-IR OPOs in the cw as well as ultrafast picosecond regime pumped by fiber-lasers making them compact and robust. In the cw regime, we developed a high-power, Yb-fiber-laser pumped mid-IR OPO based on MgO:PPLN spanning 1506-1945 nm in the near-IR and 2304-3615 nm wavelength range in the mid-IR, efficiently addressing the thermal effects by implementing the optimum signal output coupling. Novel materials such a MgO:sPPLT, with better optical and thermal properties for cw mid-IR generation are explored. High-power broadband, cw mid-IR generation is also demonstrated by using the extended phase-matching properties of MgO:PPLN. Further, we also demonstrated a simple, inexpensive and novel interferometric technique for absolute optimization of output power from a ring optical oscillator. We deployed a picosecond Yb-fiber-laser pumped mid-IR OPO based on MgO:PPLN in ring cavity configuration to demonstrate this proof-of-principle experiment for
Fuentes coherentes de luz continua y de alta potencia en el infrarrojo-medio (mid-IR) son de gran interés por su aplicación en la detección de gases, detección remota y la observación de imágenes. Estas aplicaciones requieren un ancho de banda amplio para evidenciar las características que ofrece la absorción de una gran variedad de especies moleculares, particularmente en la región “finger print” del mid-IR. Por otra parte, fuentes altamente energéticas con pulsos que posean estructuras peculiares en rangos específicos de longitud de onda en el mid-IR, entre 6-6.5 m. , prometen características únicas para nuevas aplicaciones en cirugía. Osciladores ópticos paramétricos (OPOs) constituyen fuentes de luz versátiles y apropiadas para todas las aplicaciones mencionadas anteriormente. La longitud de En el régimen ultrarápido, hemos demostrado una nueva técnica de interferometría para la optimización absoluta de la potencia de salida de un oscilador óptico con una cavidad de anillo. Como demostración de principio, implementamos, por primera vez, un OPO de picosegundos en el mid-IR basado en MgO:PPLN con una cavidad de anillo bombeado por un láser de fibra de Yb. Además, hemos desarrollado un nuevo OPO de alta energía en el mid-IR basado en el material nolineal CSP. Esto representa la primera demostración de un OPO compacto de alta repetición sincrónicamente bombeado por un láser de estado sólido a 1064 nm generando pulsos de milijulios en el rango espectral 6-6.5 m. Esta radiación es importante para aplicaciones en cirugía. Adicionalmente, hemos demostrado una fuente verde, 532 nm, basada en láseres de fibra. Esta radiación se obtiene por medio de la generación de segundo harmónico (SHG) en un paso individual en MgO:sPPLT. Esto representa una nueva alternativa de bombeo para los láseres de Ti:sapphire que los harán compactos en el futuro. Los esfuerzos para mejorar la eficiencia de segundo harmónico resultaron en el desarrollo de un novedoso esquema que utiliza múltiples cristales y permite eficiencias de SHG de paso individual del 56%. Este esquema es general y simple y puede ser implementado para cualquier longitud de onda. onda de un OPO puede ser sintonizada en regiones amplias del espectro cambiando la temperatura del cristal no-lineal, el ángulo de ajuste de fase o, al considerar materiales cuasi ajuste de fase (QPM), cambiando el periodo de red. En esta tesis, hemos demostrado una gran variedad de OPOs en el mid-IR en régimen continuo y de pulsos de picosegundo. Estos OPOs han sido bombeados por láseres de fibra permitiendo un diseño compacto y resistente. En el régimen de emisión continua, hemos implementado un OPO de alta potencia basado en MgO:PPLN bombeado por un láser de fibra. Este OPO es sintonízable en el rango 1506-1945 nm correspondiente al infrarrojo-cercano y en el rango 2304-3615 nm correspondiente al mid-IR. Esta capacidad de sintonización se logra al sobrepasar eficientemente los efectos térmicos optimizando el acoplamiento de salida. Materiales nuevos como el MgO:sPPLT, con propiedades ópticas y térmicas mejoradas para la generación de radiación continua en el mid-IR han sido estudiados. Utilizando las propiedades ajuste de la fase extendió del MgO:sPPLT, fuentes continuas de alta potencia con un gran ancho de banda en el infrarrojo-medio también han sido implementadas.

Rare-earth-doped fiber lasers and amplifiers are relatively easy to efficiently produce a stable and high quality laser beam in a compact, robust, and alignment-free configuration. Recently, high power fiber laser systems have facilitated wide spread applications in academics, industries, and militaries in replacement of bulk solid-state laser systems. The master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) composed of a highly-controlled seed, high-gain preamplifiers, and high-efficiency power amplifiers are typically utilized to scale up the pulse energy, peak power, or average power. Furthermore, a direct-current-modulated nanosecond diode laser in single transverse mode can simply provide a compact and highly-controlled seed to result in the flexible output parameters, such as repetition rate, pulse duration, and even temporal pulse shape. However, when scaling up the peak power for high intensity applications, such a versatile diode-seeded nanosecond MOPA laser system using rare-earth-doped fibers is unable to completely save its own advantages compared to bulk laser systems. Without a strong seeding among the amplifiers, the guided amplified spontaneous amplification is easy to become dominant during the amplification, leading to the harmful self-lasing or pulsing effects, and the difficulty of the quantitative numerical comparison. In this dissertation, we study a high-efficiency and intense nanosecond ytterbium fiber MOPA system with good beam quality and stability for high intensity applications. The all-PM-fiber structure is achieved with the output extinction ratio of >12 dB by optimizing the interconnection of high power optical fibers.

The diode-seeded MOPA configuration without parasitic stimulated amplification (PAS) is implemented using the double-pass scheme to extract energy efficiently for scaling peak power. The broadband PAS was studied experimentally, which matches well with our numerical simulation. The 1064-nm nanosecond seed was a direct-current-modulated Fabry-Pérot diode laser associated with a weak and pulsed noise spanning from 1045 to 1063 nm. Even though the contribution of input noise pulse is only <5%, it becomes a significant transient spike during amplification. The blue-shifted pulsed noise may be caused by band filling effect for quantum-well seed laser driven by high peak current. The study helps the development of adaptive pulse shaping for scaling peak power or energy at high efficiency. On the other hand, the broadband spike with a 3-dB bandwidth of 8.8 nm can support pulses to seed the amplifier for sub-nanosecond giant pulse generation.

Because of the very weak seed laser, the design of high-gain preamplifier becomes critical. The utilization of single-mode core-pumped fiber preamplifier can not only improve the mode contrast without fiber coiling effect but also significantly suppress the fiber nonlinearity. The double-pass scheme was therefore studied both numerically and experimentally to improve energy extraction efficiency for the lack of attainable seed and core-pumped power. As a result, a record-high peak power of > 30 kW and energy of > 0.23 mJ was successfully achieved to the best of our knowledge from the output of clad-pumped power amplifier with a beam quality of M² ∼1.1 in a diode-seeded 15-µm-core fiber MOPA system. After the power amplifier, the MOPA conversion efficiency can be dramatically improved to >56% for an energy gain of >63 dB at a moderate repetition rate of 20 kHz with a beam quality of M ² <1.5. The output energy of >1.1 mJ with a pulse duration of ∼6.1 ns can result in a peak power up to >116 kW which is limited by fiber fuse in long-term operation. Such a condition able to generate the on-target laser intensity of > 60 GW/cm² for applications is qualified to preliminarily create a laser-plasma light source. Moreover, the related simulation results also reveal the double-passed power amplifier can further simplify MOPA.

Such an intense clad-pumped power amplifier can further become a nonlinear fiber amplifier in all-normal dispersion instead of a nonlinear passive fiber. The combination of laser amplification and nonlinear conversion together can therefore overcome the significant pump depletion during the propagation along the passive fiber for power scaling. As a result, an intense spectrum spanning from 980 to 1600 nm as a high-power nanosecond supercontinuum source can be successfully generated with a conversion efficiency of >65% and a record-high peak power of >116 kW to the best of our knowledge. Because of MOPA structure, the influence of input parameters of nonlinear fiber amplifier on supercontinuum parameters can also be studied. The onset and interplay of fiber nonlinearities can be revealed stage by stage. Such an unique and linearly-polarized light source composed of an intense pump and broad sideband seed is beneficial for efficiently driving the broadband tunable optical parametric amplification free from the bulkiness and timing jitter.

Keywords: High power fiber laser and amplifier, ytterbium fiber, master oscillator power amplification, parasitic stimulated amplification, multi-pass fiber amplification, peak power/pulse energy scaling, fiber nonlinear optics, supercontinuum generation.

Fiber lasers represent the state-of-the-art in laser technology and hold great promise for a wide range of applications because they have a minimum of exposed optical interfaces, very high efficiency, and are capable of exceptional beam quality. In the near future, the most important markets such as micromachining, automotive, biomedical and military applications will begin to use this technology. The scope of this thesis is to design and develop a short picosecond pulsed fiber laser using rare-earth doped fiber as a gain medium. The proposed master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) will be used to generate pulses with high repetition rates. In this study, first we explain the basic theoretical background of nonlinear optics and fiber laser. Then, the numerical simulation will be introduced to explain how the laser system design and optimization. The simulation is based on nonlinear Schrö
dinger equation with the method of split-step evaluation. The brief theoretical background and simulation results of the laser system will be shown. Finally, the experimental study of the developmental fiber laser system that comprises an oscillator, preamplifier and power amplifier will be discussed.

This thesis details the work I have done on double cladding ytterbium-doped fibre lasers. The two main subjects developed were the study of an efficient compact-launching system, and the operation of the double cladding compact fibre as a continuous-wave laser and a Q-switched laser.During this work, highly efficient side launching systems were developed. These allowed coupling of more than 70% of the pump light into the doped fibre and gave as good lasing efficiency as end-pumping system. The pump and the signal were also well separated in two different guides at the ends of the device. Efficient lasing at 976 nm (85% slope efficiency) was demonstrated too, by using small inner cladding area and double passed pump. Finally, pulse-energy as high as 7.7 mJ was achieved with a large core cladding pumped ytterbium doped Q-switched fibre laser.

In recent years laser technology has increasingly developed with the use of fiber lasers and this has provided the possibility to implement different techniques in the defense industry. LADAR is at the forefront of these techniques. Fiber lasers constitute a perfect source for LADAR systems due to their excellent robustness, compact size and high-power generation capability. In this study we will explore the development of a pulsed fiber laser source for a LADAR system that can obtain high resolution 3D images in eye-safe region. A high power, all fiber integrated erbium system with strictly single mode operation in eye-safe region based on MOPA (master oscillator power amplifier) configuration with seed source and amplifier part was developed. Both the use of an actively mode locked laser with erbium doped fiber and fiber coupled modulated distributed feedback diode laser were investigated as seed sources for the amplifier part. Both erbium doped single clad fiber and erbium-ytterbium doped double clad gain fiber were used in this amplifier system. After amplification of the actively mode locked laser, 12 W of average optical power was obtained through single mode fiber with 1ns pulse duration at 10 MHz which corresponds to 1.2 kW peak power. For the fiber coupled DFB diode laser, 9.5W average power was obtained with around 8 ns duration pulses at 100 kHz and about 9.2 W average power was also obtained with around 700 ps duration pulses at 1 MHz through strictly single mode fiber at the output of the same amplifier system as was used in the actively mode locked seed source. In both cases calculated peak power was around 10 kW v which is estimated as the highest peak power for an all fiber integrated system with single mode operation. The development of such a fiber system with high power capability, compact size and free of misalignment is expected to be useful for LADAR application as well as other areas such as eye surgery, 3D silicon processing or any other material processing applications.

Ultrafast picosecond coherent sources in the near-to-mid-infrared (IR) spectral range are of great interest for a variety of applications such as pump-probe spectroscopy, remote sensing, photobiology and novel upconversion imaging techniques. Nonlinear optics, and in particular nonlinear frequency conversion techniques, offer an efficient and effective approach towards the realization of sources emitting such radiation, as nowadays, nonlinear frequency conversion technologies are recognised to be viable and reliable sources of laser radiation with broad wavelength tunability and power scalability, without the need of cryogenic cooling. In this thesis, we have demonstrated high-power, high-repetition-rate picosecond sources based on nonlinear frequency conversion processes through optical parametric oscillators (OPOs) and difference-frequency-generation (DFG), in order to cover the near- to mid-IR wavelength region. We have developed a stable, high-repetition-rate picosecond rapidly tunable OPO based on fan-out designed grating periods in PPKTP nonlinear crystal. The OPO is synchronously pumped by a mode-locked frequency-doubled Yb-fiber laser in the green at 532 nm, and can provide stable and high-power radiation which is rapidly tunable from 749-962 nm in the signal and from 1189-1838 nm in the idler, at room temperature. Further, we have demonstrated what we believe to be the first tunable high-repetition-rate picosecond source based on OP-GaP crystal in the mid-IR. Using a single-pass DFG between a mode-locked Yb-fiber laser at 1064 nm and the tunable output from a picosecond MgO:sPPLT OPO synchronously pumped by the same laser, the source generated continuous tunable radiation across 3040-3132 nm in the mid-IR at the repetition rate of ~80 MHz, in good beam quality. Additionally, we have also presented the first high-power, high-beam-quality, idler-resonant picosecond OPO based on a multi-grating MgO:PPLN crystal tunable across 2100-4000 nm in the mid-IR. The OPO provided as much as 3.5 W of mid-IR radiation with M2 values to be better than 1.8 in both horizontal and vertical directions
Las fuentes coherentes de picosegundos ultrarrápidos en el rango espectral de infrarrojo cercano a infrarrojo medio (IR) son de gran interés para una amplia variedad de aplicaciones tales como pump-probe espectroscopia, la teledetección, la fotobiología y las nuevas técnicas de upconversion imaging. La óptica no lineal, y en particular las técnicas de conversión de frecuencia no lineal, ofrecen un enfoque eficiente y eficaz para la realización de fuentes que emiten tales radiaciones, ya que hoy en día, las fuentes basadas en la conversión de frecuencia no lineal son fuentes viables y fiables de emisión de radiaciones láser con amplia sintonía de longitud de onda y escalabilidad de potencia, sin necesidad de refrigeración criogénica. En esta tesis, hemos demostrado fuentes de picosegundos de alta potencia y alta tasa de repetición basadas en procesos de conversión de frecuencia no lineales a través de osciladores ópticos paramétricos (OPO) y generación de frecuencias de diferencia (DFG) para cubrir la región de longitud de onda de IR cercano a IR medio del espectro electromagnético. Hemos desarrollado una fuente de picosegundos estable, de alta tasa de repetición, rápidamente sintonizable, basado en un cristal PPKTP con períodos de rejilla diseñados en forma de abanico. El OPO, es bombeado sincrónicamente por un mode-locked láser de fibra de Yb, doblado en frecuencia para generar verde a 532 nm, que proporciona radiación estable y de alta potencia rápidamente sintonizable de 749-962 nm en el signal y de 1189-1838 nm en el idler, a temperatura ambiente. Además, hemos demostrado lo que creemos que es la primera fuente de picosegundos sintonizable con alta tasa de repetición basada en el cristal OP-GaP en el IR medio. Usando una DFG de un solo paso entre un mode-locked láser de fibra de Yb a 1064 nm y la salida ajustable de un OPO de picosegundo basado en un cristal de MgO:sPPLT bombeado sincrónicamente por el mismo láser, la fuente generó radiación sintonizable de 3040-3132 nm en el medio-IR a la velocidad de repetición de ~80 MHz, con buena calidad de haz. Además, también presentamos el primer OPO de picosegundos de alta potencia y buena calidad de haz, con resonancia del idler, basado en un cristal MgO:PPLN de rejilla múltiple sintonizable a lo largo de 2100-4000 nm en el IR medio. El OPO proporcionó hasta 3.5 W de radiación de IR medio con valores de M2 mejores que 1.8 tanto en dirección horizontal como vertical

This dissertation presents the exploration of two fiber optics techniques involving high power pulse laser delivery. The first research topic is "Embedded Active Fiber Optic Sensing Network for Structural Health Monitoring in Harsh Environments", which uses the fiber delivered pulse laser for acoustic generation. The second research topic is "Fiber Optics Guided Laser Micromachining", which uses the fiber delivered pulse laser for material ablation. The objective of the first research topic is to develop a first-of-a-kind technology for remote fiber optic generation and detection of acoustic waves for structural health monitoring in harsh environments. Three different acoustic generation mechanisms were studied in detail, including laser induced plasma breakdown (LIB), Erbium-doped fiber laser absorption, and metal laser absorption. By comparing the performance of the acoustic generation units built based on these three mechanisms, the metal laser absorption method was selected to build a complete fiber optic structure health monitoring (FO-SHM) system. Based on the simulation results of elastic wave propagation and fiber Bragg grating acoustic pulse detection, an FO-SHM sensing system was designed and built. This system was first tested on an aluminum piece in the room temperature range and successfully demonstrated its capability of multi-parameter monitoring and multi-point sensing. With additional studies, the upgraded FO-SHM element was successfully demonstrated at high temperatures up to 600oC on P-91 high temperature steels. During the studies of high power pulse laser delivery, it was discovered that with proper laser-to-fiber coupling, the output laser from a multimode fiber can directly ablate materials around the fiber tip. Therefore, it is possible to use a fiber-guided laser beam instead of free space laser beams for micromachining, and this solves the aspect ratio limitation rooted in a traditional laser beam micromachining method. In this dissertation, this Guided Laser MicroMachining (GLMM) concept was developed and experimentally demonstrated by applying it to high aspect ratio micro-drilling. It was achieved that an aspect ratio of 40 on aluminum and an aspect ratio of 100 on PET, with a hole diameter less than 200 um.
PHD
This dissertation presents two research topics both related to high power laser and fiber optic. The first topic studies the application of using optical fiber and high power laser for ultrasonic non-destructive evaluation. The general idea is to use fiber optic to remotely generate and monitor ultrasonic waves on a workpiece. Due to the fact that there are no electronic components involved in the sensing part of the system, this system can work at high temperature and is unsusceptible to EMI. The second topic studies the usage of optical fiber in high aspect ratio micromachining. The key concept is to use a fiber tip and the output high power laser as a "drilling tip", which eliminate the aspect ratio limitation rooted in the traditional free-space laser micromachining method. With this concept and a demonstrative micromachining system, we achieved record-breaking aspect ratio on both aluminum and plastic.

The main objective of this thesis is to explore the use of volume holographic elements recorded in photo-thermo-refractive (PTR) glass for power scaling of narrow linewidth diffraction-limited fiber lasers to harness high average power and high brightness beams. Single fiber lasers enable kW level output powers limited by optical damage, thermal effects and non-linear effects. Output powers can be further scaled using large mode area fibers, however, at the cost of beam quality and instabilities due to the presence of higher order modes. The mechanisms limiting the performance of narrow-linewidth large mode area fiber lasers are investigated and solutions using intra-cavity volume Bragg gratings (VBG) proposed. Self-pulsations-free, completely continuous-wave operation of a VBG-stabilized unidirectional fiber ring laser is demonstrated with quasi single-frequency (< 7.5 MHz) output. A method for transverse mode selection in multimode fiber lasers to reduce higher order mode content and stabilize the output beam profile is developed using angular selectivity of reflecting VBGs. By placing the VBG output coupler in a convergent beam, stabilization of the far-field beam profile of a 20 ?m core large mode area fiber laser is demonstrated. Beam combining techniques are essential to power scale beyond the limitations of single laser sources. Several beam combining techniques relevant to fiber lasers were compared in this study and found to be lacking in one or more of the following aspects: the coherence of the individual sources is compromised, the far-field beam quality is highly degraded with significant power in side lobes, spectrally broad and unstable, and uncertainty over scaling to larger arrays and higher power. Keeping in mind the key requirements of coherence, good far-field beam quality, narrow and stable spectra, and scalability in both array size and power, a new passive coherent beam combining technique using multiplexed volume Bragg gratings (M-VBGs) is proposed. In order to understand the mechanism of radiation exchange between multiple beams via these complex holographic optical elements, the spectral and beam splitting properties a 2nd order reflecting M-VBG recorded in PTR glass is experimentally investigated using a tunable single frequency seed laser. Two single-mode Yb-doped fiber lasers are then coherently combined using reflecting M-VBGs in both linear and unidirectional-ring resonators with >90% combining efficiency and diffraction-limited beam quality. It is demonstrated that the combining bandwidth can be controlled in the range of 100s of pm to a few pm by angular detuning of the M-VBG. Very narrow-linewidth (< 210 MHz) operation in a linear cavity and possibility of single-frequency operation in a unidirectional ring cavity of the coherently combined system is demonstrated using this technique. It is theoretically derived and experimentally demonstrated that high combining efficiency can be achieved even by multiplexing low-efficiency VBGs, with the required diffraction efficiency of individual VBGs decreasing as array size increases. Scaling of passive coherent beam combining to four fiber lasers is demonstrated using a 4th order transmitting M-VBG. Power scaling of this technique to 10 W level combined powers with 88% combining efficiency is demonstrated by passively combining two large mode area fiber lasers using a 2nd order reflecting M-VBG in a unidirectional ring resonator. High energy compact single-frequency sources are highly desired for several applications – one of which is as a seed for high power fiber amplifiers. Towards achieving the goal of a monolithic solid-state laser, a new gain medium having both photosensitive and luminescence properties is investigated – rare-earth doped PTR glass. First lasing is demonstrated in this new gain element in a VBG-stabilized external cavity.
Ph.D.
Doctorate
Optics and Photonics
Optics and Photonics
Optics

Tandem pumping technique are traditionally adopted to develop > 3-kW continuous-wave (cw) Yb3+-doped fiber lasers, which are usually pumped by other fiber lasers at shorter wavelengths (1018 nm e.g.). Fiber lasers directly pumped by laser diodes have higher wall-plug efficiency and are more compact. Here we report two high brightness monolithic cw fiber laser sources at 1080 nm. Both lasers consist of a cw fiber laser oscillator and one laser-diode pumped double cladding fiber amplifier in the master oscillator-power amplifier configuration. One laser, using 30-mu m-core Yb3+-doped fiber as the gain medium, can produce > 5-kW average laser power with near diffraction-limited beam quality (M-2<1.8). The slope efficiency of the fiber amplifier with respect to the launched pump power reached 86.5%. The other laser utilized 50-mu m-core Yb3+-doped fiber as the gain medium and produced > 8-kW average laser power with high beam quality (M-2: similar to 4). The slope efficiency of the fiber amplifier with respect to the launched pump power reach 83%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first detailed report for > 5-kW near-diffraction-limited and > 8-kW high-brightness monolithic fiber lasers directly pumped by laser diodes.

The topic of this proposal is the development of high peak power laser sources with a focus on linearly chirped pulse laser sources. In the past decade chirped optical pulses have found a plethora of applications such as photonic analog-to-digital conversion, optical coherence tomography, laser ranging, etc. This dissertation analyzes the aforementioned applications of linearly chirped pulses and their technical requirements, as well as the performance of previously demonstrated parabolic pulse shaping approaches. The experimental research addresses the topic of parabolic pulse generation in two distinct ways. First, pulse shaping technique involving a time domain approach is presented, that results in stretched pulses with parabolic profiles with temporal duration of 15 ns. After pulse is shaped into a parabolic intensity profile, the pulse is compressed with DCF fiber spool by 100 times to 80 ps duration at FWHM. A different approach of pulse shaping in frequency domain is performed, in which a spectral processor based on Liquid Crystal on Silicon technology is used. The pulse is stretched to 1.5 ns before intensity mask is applied, resulting in a parabolic intensity profile. Due to frequency to time mapping, its temporal profile is also parabolic. After pulse shaping, the pulse is compressed with a bulk compressor, and subsequently analyzed with a Frequency Resolved Optical Gating (FROG). The spectral content of the compressed pulse is feedback to the spectral processor and used to adjust the spectral phase mask applied on the pulse. The resultant pulse after pulse shaping with feedback mechanism is a Fourier transform, sub-picosecond ultrashort pulse with 5 times increase in peak power. The appendices in this dissertation provide additional material used for the realization of the main research focus of the dissertation. Specification and characterization of major components of equipment and devices used in the experiment are present. The description of Matlab algorithms that was used to calculate required signals for pulse shaping are shown. A brief description of the Labview code used to control the spectral processor will also be illustrated.
Ph.D.
Doctorate
Physics
Sciences
Physics

Les sources laser à fibre, haute puissance et de faible largeur spectrale sont de plus en plus utiles pour des applications à la fois industrielle et scientifique. Cependant, le développement de ces sources est limité par les seuils d’apparition d’effets non-linéaires tels que la Diffusion Brillouin Stimulée (DBS) du fait d’un fort confinement de la lumière dans le coeur de la fibre. Un premier amplificateur en régime monofréquence de puissance moyenne égale à 50W a été développé à partir d’une diode laser signal de 50 mW. L’étude du bruit d’intensité sur cet amplificateur a montré que l’utilisation de fibres standards (diamètre de coeur < à 20μm) jusqu’à 50W est limitée par l’apparition du phénomène de DBS se traduisant par une dégradation du bruit d’intensité. Pour s’affranchir de ces effets non-linéaires, une solution réside sur l’utilisation de fibres à large aire modale (LMA) dont les diamètres des coeurs est égale à plusieurs dizaines de microns. Les fibres LMA présentent un recouvrement [coeur dopé / onde de pompe] optimisé conduisant à une réduction de la longueur du milieu à gain. Par cette stratégie de la diminution du confinement spatial du faisceau avec une diminution de la longueur d’interaction, le seuil d’apparition des effets non-linéaires est repoussé. Mais paradoxalement, cette stratégie va induire une nouvelle limitation non-linéaire, non plus en termes de puissance crête mais de puissance moyenne. En effet, les coeurs multimodaux des fibres LMA, couplés à une charge thermique par unité de longueur forte (pour une puissance de moyenne de sortie équivalente) vont induire l’apparition d’effets non-linéaires en puissance moyenne : les Instabilités Modales (IM) et la Dégradation Modale de la Fibre (DMF). Ce sont donc les stratégies usuelles utilisées pour repousser les effets non-linéaires qui ont conduit à l’avènement de ces nouveaux effets délétères. Un système d’asservissement du bruit d’intensité efficace (suppression > 30 dB) sur une bande passante d’1MHz permet de supprimer le bruit en excès des diodes de pompe
High power, narrow linewidth fiber lasers are useful for both industrial and scientific applications. Nevertheless, nonlinear effects like Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) are main limitations of these laser sources due to high power in fiber core. A first amplifier in single-frequency operation with 50W of output power from a laser diode seeder of 50 mW was developed. Study of intensity noise on this amplifier developed with standard fiber (core diameter less than 20 μm) showed that SBS leads to a degradation of noise properties of the laser. The use of large mode area (LMA) fibers is a solution for suppressing nonlinear effects with core diameters bigger than several tens of microns. LMA fibers show an overlap between doped core and pump wave optimized leading to a reduction of gain medium length. This strategy permits to increase nonlinear effect threshold. Second step of high power amplifiers with LMA fibers allows to obtain 100W in single-frequency regime without DBS. LMA fiber used have a core diameter equals to 40μm. Power scaling from 100W to 200W highlights a new limiting non-linear effect: Fiber Modal Degradation (FMD). Indeed, multimodal cores of these fibers, coupled to high thermal load lead to non-linear effects like Modal Instabilities (IM) and FMD. FMD effect, first described by Ward et al in 2016, is a thermo-optic effect characterized by a beam quality degradation with power transfer from fundamental mode to high order modes. Furthermore, a decrease of output power, synonym of guidance loss of fundamental mode in gain medium is observed. Unlike well-known effect IM, this phenomenon doesn’t act like a threshold phenomenon. In fact, transitory regime in association with FMD is longer than IM caused by photodarkening dynamic. In our study, beam quality at the output of the fiber was degraded after several tens of hours at 200W. For understanding this effect, a photodarkening effect study both in continuous wave (CW) and pulsed regime was carried out. This study shows that for the first time a photodarkening and photobleaching equilibrium on high power amplifiers in pulsed regime. These thermo-induced effects threshold depends on thermal load and are different for both regimes: 120W for CW and 150W for pulsed regime. Finally, a study and a reduction of intensity noise based from a servo-loop were carried out on 100W amplifier. A 1MHz bandwidth with a 30 dB decrease of noise were demonstrated. These results allow to develop high power and low intensity noise lasers at industrial level”

In this thesis, I report experimental studies towards power scaling of ultrashort fibre-based sources designed for applications including high average power femtosecond pulse generation and nonlinear frequency conversion. While the power produced by rare-earth doped fibre lasers operating in continuous-wave has dramatically increased within a few years to exceed the kilowatt level, pulsed fibre sources have been limited to tens of watts due to the onset of nonlinearities in fibre amplifiers. Therefore the aim is to manage fibre nonlinearities to achieve specific output properties at high average power. An innovative aspect of this work lies in the remarkable combination of telecom-grade semiconductor laser sources and high-power Yb-doped fibre amplifier technologies to produce short pulses at very high average power. Fibre nonlinear effects are often detrimental to the performance of fibre systems but can also provide an attractive tool to generate new useful wavelengths. The final part of this thesis describes efficient white light generation produced by a microstructure fibre pumped by the previously described green fibre source. Furthermore, I investigated a novel fibre source configuration for guide star application. The source I developed produced 1W at 589 nm through frequency doubling of 1178 nm radiation produced by pulsed Raman amplification in an Yb-doped fibre amplifier.

Les recherches industrielles ou académiques autour laser délivrant des impulsions ultracourtes reposent de plus en plus sur la technologie des lasers à fibre. Elles s’appuient sur les avantages intrinsèques des systèmes à fibre, tels que leur stabilité, compacité, l'excellente qualité modale du faisceau délivré, leur robustesse et leur facilité d'utilisation. Au cours de ce travail, nous avons réalisé l’étude détaillée d’un laser à fibre délivrant des impulsions picosecondes fonctionnant dans un régime de dispersion normale (ANDi). Ce laser a par la suite été déployé pour étudier de la génération paramétrique dans une fibre à cristal photonique. Nous avons tout d’abord développé une source laser à fibre de haute puissance délivrant des impulsions picosecondes dont on peut accorder à la fois la longueur d'onde centrale et la largeur spectrale. La source développée autour d’une cavité en anneau comprend la combinaison d’une fibre d'ytterbium à grande surface modale du type « rod-type », une fente et un réseau de diffraction en transmission. À la longueur d'onde centrale de ∼ 1030 nm et à un taux de répétition de 78 MHz, ce laser délivre des impulsions picosecondes avec une puissance moyenne allant jusqu'à 25 W. La durée des impulsions peut être ajustée en continu entre ∼ 1,8 ps et ∼ 4,5 ps alors que l'énergie des impulsions varie entre ∼ 320 nJ et ∼ 225 nJ. Nous avons également démontré que la longueur d'onde centrale des impulsions laser peut-être finement réglée entre ∼ 1010 nm à ∼ 1060 nm tout en s’assurant que l'énergie de l'impulsion est supérieure ∼ 150 nJ. Nous avons également développé un modèle numérique pour rendre compte de l'ensemble de nos données expérimentales. Nos simulations sont en bon accord avec nos résultats expérimentaux. Les impulsions délivrées par cette source ont été utilisées pour étudier et réaliser un oscillateur paramétrique optique dans une fibre optique. Les ondes signal et idler générées résultent d’un mélange paramétrique à quatre-onde induit dans une fibre à cristal photonique. Cet OPO à fibre est simplement résonnant pour l’onde signal. L'efficacité de conversion pour l’onde signal est proche de 20 %. Le profil de dispersion spectrale de la fibre à cristal photonique et l’accordabilité spectrale de notre laser de pompe nous ont permis de générer des ondes du signal (resp. idler) comprises respectivement entre ∼ 770 nm et ∼ 1000 nm ( ∼ 1130 nm et ∼ 1590nm) lorsque la longueur d'onde des impulsions pompe est ajustée entre ∼ 1024 nm et ∼ 1059 nm
Ultrashort laser pulses in both industrial and research applications progressively rely on fiber laser technology, guided by its intrinsic benefits, for instance, stability, compact nature, excellent beam quality, robustness, and easy operation. In this work, a detailed study has been done to investigate picosecond fiber laser working in an all-normal-dispersion (ANDi) regime for the application of parametric generation in photonic crystal fiber. In summary, we have developed a high-power fiber laser source delivering picosecond pulses with tunability both in central wavelength and spectral width. It incorporates a combination of a large-mode-area rod-type ytterbium fiber, a slit, and a transmission grating inside the ring laser cavity configuration. At the central wavelength of ∼ 1030 nm and with a repetition of 78 MHz, this laser delivers picosecond pulses with an average power of up to 25 W. The pulse duration can be continuously adjusted from ∼ 1.8 ps to ∼ 4.5 ps and pulse energy from ∼ 320 nJ and ∼ 225 nJ, respectively. Additionally, we have also demonstrated that the central wavelength of the laser pulse can be finely tuned from ∼ 1010 nm to ∼ 1060 nm while keeping the pulse energy above ∼ 150 nJ. We have also proposed a numerical model to account for the ensemble of our experimental data and the simulations are in good agreement with the experimental data. The output of this fiber oscillator is propagated through the photonic crystal fiber for the parametric generation of the signal (higher frequencies than the pump) and idler (lower frequencies than the pump). The fiber OPO singly-resonant cavity was built in such a way that only signal wavelengths are allowed to propagate through it. The conversion efficiency for the signal was close to 20 % in the fiber OPO. Based on the dispersion profile of the photonic crystal fiber and our homebuilt tunable pump laser, the signal wavelength (resp. idler) was tuned from ∼ 770 nm to ∼ 1000 nm (∼ 1130 nm to ∼ 1590nm) for the corresponding pump wavelengths of ∼ 1024 nm to ∼ 1059 nm

The development of tailored micro-structured optical fibers has known a real infatuation during the last two decades allowing an outstanding management of optical properties. In particular, this approach was beneficial to the emission of a robust singlemode beam from large mode area fibers whose the core size exceeds 40 μm. This ability has made fiber lasers serious and competitive candidates for widespread applications such as micro-machining or surgery. In this purpose, several fiber structures have been devised (Large Pitch Fibers and Distributed Mode Filtering bers for instance), pushing further the performances of high-power fiber lasers and amplifiers. However, new detrimental phenomena impact their operation at high-power regime. Indeed, a degradation of the beam quality is noticed when the emitted power overcomes a certain threshold, because of the inherent capability of state-of-the-art fibers to sustain several guided modes into their core. In this context, I first investigated thoroughly the behavior of guided modes in state-ofthe- art ultra large-mode-area fibers and highlighted several milestones allowing to get an efficient selective amplication. Hence, I benefited from these statements to propose novel kinds of all-solid micro-structured fibers exhibiting an enhancement of the singlemode robustness. I demonstrated a record modal discrimination in a so-called Spiral LPF whose the inner cladding pattern is totally asymmetry. The first fabrications of these all-solid fibers are also reported, contributing to clearly define the prospect of this work as well as the fabrication hurdles
Le développement de fibres optiques micro-structurées spécifiques a connu un réel engouement au cours des 20 dernières années permettant un contrôle remarquable des propriétés optiques. En particulier, cette approche a été bénéfique à l'émission d'un faisceau monomode robuste à partir de fibres à large aire modale dont le diamètre de coeur excède 40 μm. Cette capacité a promu les lasers à fibres au rang de sérieux et compétitifs candidats pour des applications répandues telles que le micro-usinage ou la chirurgie. Dans ce but, de multiples structures de fibres ont été mise au point (Large Pitch Fibers et les "Distributed Mode Filtering fibers" par exemple), accroissant les performances des lasers et amplicateurs fibrés de fortes puissances. Cependant, de nouveaux phénomènes néfastes impactent leur fonctionnement dans ce régime. En effet, une dégradation de la qualité du faisceau est notable lorsque la puissance émise surpasse un certain seuil, en raison de la capacité inhérente des fibres de l'état de l'art à supporter plusieurs modes guidés dans leur coeur. Dans ce contexte, j'ai premièrement étudié attentivement le comportement des modes guidés dans les fibres à très large aire modale de l'état de l'art et mis en lumière plusieurs principes fondamentaux utiles à l'obtention d'une amplification sélective efficace. Ensuite, j'ai tiré bénéfice de ces constats pour proposer de nouveaux types de fibres microstructurées exhibant une amélioration de la robustesse de leur unimodalité. J'ai ainsi démontré une discrimination modale record dans une fibre appelé LPF Spirale dont le motif de la gaine interne est totalement asymétrique. Les premières fabrications de ces fibres toute solides sont également rapportées, contribuant à clairement définir les perspectives de ces travaux ainsi que les contraintes de fabrication

Les fibres optiques en silice dopées ytterbium sont couramment utilisées pour des applications laser à forte puissance depuis plusieurs années. Ces puissances ne cessent de croître en raison de progrès continus sur les procédés de fabrication des fibres optiques. Cette thèse s’intéresse à l’élaboration de cœurs de fibres optiques en silice vitreuse dopée ytterbium par un procédé plasma (SPCVD). Cette technique a été inventée en 1986 pour la fabrication de fibres optiques de télécommunications et nous l’avons adaptée dans ces travaux de thèse à la fabrication de cœurs de fibres à grande aire effective dopés en terres rares. Dans un premier temps, la mise au point du procédé et des différentes sources d’évaporation des précurseurs est présentée. Les principaux cœurs de fibres élaborés sont très riches en silice, et faiblement dopés en aluminium, en fluor et en ytterbium. L’homogénéité radiale et longitudinale des cœurs est discutée, et plusieurs options sont proposées pour l’améliorer. Dans un deuxième temps, la structure du réseau vitreux des cœurs élaborés ainsi que l’environnement et la dispersion de l’ion Yb3+ au sein du réseau vitreux silicaté sont étudiés. Pour cela, une approche multi-spectroscopique est utilisée : la résonance magnétique nucléaire informe sur l’environnement des noyaux à spin nucléaire non nul 29Si, 27Al et 19F tandis que la résonance paramagnétique électronique à impulsions permet à la fois de sonder spécifiquement l’environnement de l’ion Yb3+ et d’étudier sa dispersion au sein du réseau vitreux. Ces expériences sont complétées par des caractérisations optiques telles que l’absorption et la luminescence des ions Yb3+. Enfin, les cœurs de fibres élaborés par la méthode SPCVD sont caractérisés en cavité laser. L’efficacité de conversion, la qualité de faisceau et la résistance au photonoircissement de plusieurs cœurs aluminosilicatés co-dopés en fluor et en ytterbium sont présentés
Ytterbium-doped silica optical fibers are widely used for high power laser applications for several years. These powers keep on increasing due to continuous improvements in optical fibers fabrication processes. The aim of this PhD is to synthesize ytterbium-doped silica optical fibers’ cores using a plasma process named SPCVD. This method has been created in 1986 for telecommunications optical fibers synthesis, and we have adapted it to fit the fabrication of rare earth-doped large-mode-area optical fiber cores. We first present the development of ways of evaporating low vapor pressure reagents. All the synthesized optical fiber cores are silica-rich, and slightly doped with both aluminum, fluorine and ytterbium. Radial and longitudinal homogeneities are discussed, and we propose several options in order to improve them. Then, the glassy network structure of the fabricated cores and also the neighborhood and dispersal of Yb3+ ion in the silicate network are studied. Thus, we used several spectroscopic studies: nuclear magnetic resonance enables to focus on non-zero nuclear spin nucleus (29Si, 27Al, 19F) whereas electronic paramagnetic resonance is used to probe the neighborhood and the dispersal of Yb3+ ions. We also based our study on optical characterizations as absorption and luminescence of Yb3+ ions. Finally, the fibers’ cores we synthesized using the SPCVD process have been characterized in a laser cavity. We present the power conversion efficiency, the beam quality and the resistance to photodarkening of several ytterbium and fluorine-co-doped aluminosilicate cores

Mid-Infrared Photonics has attracted growing interest in recent years due to the presence of many strong characteristic vibrational transitions that are highly resonance with the low-energy photons of the mid-infrared. As such, a plethora of potential applications stand to benefit from the availability of well-understood and robust sources within this wavelength region including spectroscopy, medicine and defence. The region surrounding 3 µm, corresponding to the antisymmetric stretching vibration of O-H as well as a region of high atmospheric transparency, is of particular interest. However, this spectral region is not yet accessible via readily available devices. As such, the development of well understood, versatile, laser sources at 3 µm remains an area of great scientific interest. In this work, a Ho3+, Pr3+ co-doped fluoride fibre laser is presented that produces an output power of 7.2 W generated at a slope efficiency of 29 %. The excitation source was a power scalable Yb3+-pumped 1.150 µm Raman fibre laser which emitted up to 50 W. The emission linewidth of the system was <0.14 nm and the wavelength of the system was observed to tune between 2.825 µm and 2.975 µm, overlapping with the O-H absorption region of many midinfrared transparent glasses. The system then finds use as a tool for the accurate measurement of the background scattering loss and the degree of water incorporation in the rare earth doped core of a range of commercially available double clad ZBLAN fibres. Furthermore, the spectral location of the O-H absorption feature was observed to be dependent on glass composition shifting from 2.872 µm in undoped ZBLAN to 2.896 µm upon co-doping with Ho3+, Pr3+. Additionally, the chalcogenide glass, As2S3, was observed to have an O-H peak location of 2.911 µm.

Les fibres optiques en silice dopées ytterbium sont couramment utilisées pour des applications laser à forte puissance depuis plusieurs années. Ces puissances ne cessent de croître en raison de progrès continus sur les procédés de fabrication des fibres optiques. Cette thèse s’intéresse à l’élaboration de cœurs de fibres optiques en silice vitreuse dopée ytterbium par un procédé plasma (SPCVD). Cette technique a été inventée en 1986 pour la fabrication de fibres optiques de télécommunications et nous l’avons adaptée dans ces travaux de thèse à la fabrication de cœurs de fibres à grande aire effective dopés en terres rares. Dans un premier temps, la mise au point du procédé et des différentes sources d’évaporation des précurseurs est présentée. Les principaux cœurs de fibres élaborés sont très riches en silice, et faiblement dopés en aluminium, en fluor et en ytterbium. L’homogénéité radiale et longitudinale des cœurs est discutée, et plusieurs options sont proposées pour l’améliorer. Dans un deuxième temps, la structure du réseau vitreux des cœurs élaborés ainsi que l’environnement et la dispersion de l’ion Yb3+ au sein du réseau vitreux silicaté sont étudiés. Pour cela, une approche multi-spectroscopique est utilisée : la résonance magnétique nucléaire informe sur l’environnement des noyaux à spin nucléaire non nul 29Si, 27Al et 19F tandis que la résonance paramagnétique électronique à impulsions permet à la fois de sonder spécifiquement l’environnement de l’ion Yb3+ et d’étudier sa dispersion au sein du réseau vitreux. Ces expériences sont complétées par des caractérisations optiques telles que l’absorption et la luminescence des ions Yb3+. Enfin, les cœurs de fibres élaborés par la méthode SPCVD sont caractérisés en cavité laser. L’efficacité de conversion, la qualité de faisceau et la résistance au photonoircissement de plusieurs cœurs aluminosilicatés co-dopés en fluor et en ytterbium sont présentés
Ytterbium-doped silica optical fibers are widely used for high power laser applications for several years. These powers keep on increasing due to continuous improvements in optical fibers fabrication processes. The aim of this PhD is to synthesize ytterbium-doped silica optical fibers’ cores using a plasma process named SPCVD. This method has been created in 1986 for telecommunications optical fibers synthesis, and we have adapted it to fit the fabrication of rare earth-doped large-mode-area optical fiber cores. We first present the development of ways of evaporating low vapor pressure reagents. All the synthesized optical fiber cores are silica-rich, and slightly doped with both aluminum, fluorine and ytterbium. Radial and longitudinal homogeneities are discussed, and we propose several options in order to improve them. Then, the glassy network structure of the fabricated cores and also the neighborhood and dispersal of Yb3+ ion in the silicate network are studied. Thus, we used several spectroscopic studies: nuclear magnetic resonance enables to focus on non-zero nuclear spin nucleus (29Si, 27Al, 19F) whereas electronic paramagnetic resonance is used to probe the neighborhood and the dispersal of Yb3+ ions. We also based our study on optical characterizations as absorption and luminescence of Yb3+ ions. Finally, the fibers’ cores we synthesized using the SPCVD process have been characterized in a laser cavity. We present the power conversion efficiency, the beam quality and the resistance to photodarkening of several ytterbium and fluorine-co-doped aluminosilicate cores

Les travaux présentés dans ce manuscrit s’inscrivent dans le cadre d’une thèse CIFRE en collaboration entre le laboratoire XLIM et la compagnie industrielle des laser « CILAS ». L'objectif principal de cette thèse est l'étude et la conception de sources laser fibrées émettant en régime continu des faisceaux monomodes de puissance multi-kW. L'architecture « MOPA » (composée d’une oscillateur maître et d’un amplificateur de puissance), a été sélectionnée à l'aide de la bibliographie pour atteindre ces objectifs, puis a été réalisée à XLIM. En améliorant cette architecture, la source fibrée a délivré une puissance continue de 2 kW à la longueur d'onde de 1080 nm, un record atteint pour la première fois en France à notre connaissance. Grâce à ces résultats, un outil de simulation a été calibré puis a été utilisé afin d'identifier les limitations théoriques de cette architecture. Les modélisations ont ensuite permis de donner des propositions d’amélioration de cette architecture en fonction de la longueur d’onde de pompe, de la longueur d’onde du signal, de l’utilisation d’une autre fibre amplificatrice et de la répartition de la puissance de pompage dans les deux sens de propagation. Les résultats de simulation ont été comparés aux résultats expérimentaux obtenus à partir d’une source MOPA construite plus récemment à XLIM, ayant dépassé la puissance signal de 3 kW. Finalement, une dernière architecture plus simple, appelée MOPA "autosaturé", est simulée puis est réalisée au laboratoire. En exploitant une cavité instable temporellement et en associant, à la source, un étage de conversion de fréquence non-linéaire, la génération d’un supercontinuum d’une puissance de 40,7 W sur une largueur spectrale allant de 750 nm à 2200 nm à -30 dB a été démontrée. En perspective de ces travaux de thèse, une nouvelle étude numérique a indiqué qu’une telle source pourrait elle aussi atteindre jusqu’à 3 kW de puissance signal
This CIFRE thesis is a collaboration between the XLIM research laboratory and the industrial laser company "CILAS". The main objective of this work is to study and design high power fiber laser sources delivering a continuous wave single mode laser beam with an output power of several kW. To this end, the “MOPA” design (consisting a master oscillator stage and a power amplifier stage) was chosen from the literature and then has been built at XLIM. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time in France that 2 kW of continuous wave output power has been achieved at the signal wavelength of 1080 nm. Thanks to the experimental results, a simulation tool was calibrated and used to carry out a theoretical study of the limits of this laser source. This tool has also been used to propose some improvements of this architecture by changing the pump wavelength, the signal wavelength, the doped fiber and the combination of the pump power between the two directions of propagation. The results of the simulations were compared with the experimental results obtained from a new source reaching more than 3 kW of continuous wave power. Finally, another less complex design, called OAIFL, was calibrated using the simulation and then built. A supercontinuum was generated by exploiting the temporally unstable laser cavity, delivering a power of 40.7 W over a spectrum going from 750 nm to 2200 nm at - 30 dB. As a perspective, the simulation showed that the OAIFL source could be further amplified to reach up to 3 kW. Therefore, this laser source could be further developed in the future

Beam combining techniques have become an important tool in the design of high-power high-brightness laser systems. Spectral beam combining (SBC) is an incoherent combining technique that does not require phase control of sources, allowing for a stable and robust system. Using SBC, beams from an array of lasers with each element operated at a different wavelength are combined into a single near-diffraction-limited beam with the same aperture using dispersive optical elements. SBC by means of volume Bragg gratings (VBGs) utilizes unique spectral response of VBGs: diffraction efficiency is close to unity when the Bragg condition is satisfied and is close to zero at multiple points corresponding to particular wavelength offsets from Bragg condition. High-efficiency VBGs can be recorded in UV-sensitive photo-thermo-refractive (PTR) glass. Narrow-band reflecting VBGs allow multi-channel SBC with high spectral density of channels. In this dissertation, experimental results of SBC with high spectral density of combined channels in two spectral regions of interest (1064 and 1550 nm) are reported. The behavior of narrow-band VBGs under high-power laser radiation is investigated. A laser system with kW-level output power and near-diffraction-limited divergence of spectrally-combined output beam is demonstrated. The system combines five randomly-polarized Yb-doped fiber lasers with 0.5 nm spectral separation in central wavelengths using narrow-band reflecting VBGs with absolute efficiency of combining > 90%. A novel design of a multi-channel high-power SBC system is suggested. In this approach, a common-cavity is created for all channels such that wavelengths of the sources are passively controlled by the combination of a common output coupler and intra-cavity VBGs which also act as combining elements. Laser wavelengths are automatically selected to match resonant wavelengths of respective VBGs. We report successful demonstration of a passively-controlled SBC system consisting of two amplifiers in a common cavity configuration. A compact and rugged monolithic SBC module based on multiplexed VBGs is introduced. Experimental results of a four-channel implementation of such module are discussed. Modular design of high-power laser systems is suggested with multiple modules arranged in a series. We show that with basic combining parameters achieved up to date, laser systems with 10 kW output power can be constructed using this arrangement. Further scaling to 100 kW power level is discussed.
Ph.D.
Optics and Photonics
Optics and Photonics
Optics PhD

This thesis reports on the experimental study of high-power, high-energy, cladding-pumped, rare-earth (Yb3+, Er3+/Yb3+)-doped fibre lasers. Some of the main capabilities of fibre lasers such as: High brightness and thermal properties were exploited for the development of a variety of continuous wave (CW) and Q-switched devices, whose characteristics also includes compactness. Our devices could already be considered an option for several applications. The 25-year long scientific and commercial evolution that fibre lasers have experienced is discussed in the first two chapters. The invention of Erbium-doped fibre amplifiers (EDFA's) and Internet were two major breakthroughs, which launched the need of WDM systems and laser sources. Fibre lasers, are now considered a flexible and powerful device whose technology has finally reached its maturity. Cladding pumping is the technique employed in these experiments in order to pump double clad fibre lasers using high power, broad stripes and bars. In this work, several inner cladding shapes have been used to overcome the normally high mismatch between diode laser beams and inner cladding areas of fibre lasers. Chapter Three consists of a review of cladding-pumped fibre lasers. It describes how inner cladding geometry and pump absorption limits the output power scalability of these devices. Nonlinear effects and amplified spontaneous emission are also studied due to their implication they have over fibre lasers performance. Results on conventional, continuous wave (CW) fibre lasers including fibre characterization and employed launching techniques are described in Chapter Four. A new method to obtain high intensity laser beam output from an Yb3+-doped, cladding-pumped, highly multimode fibre laser has been proposed. In this experiment, we propose the use of fibre tapers to increase intensity and improve beam quality. In CW regime, our results show an intensity increase of ~3.5 times with a low power penalty of ~1 dB. Also, without tapering, a maximum output power of 21-W was reached with a slope efficiency of >80%. Using a simple set of optic elements such as a l/2 waveplate, a polarizing beam-splitter and a bulk grating, we investigated the polarization characteristics of an Yb3+ fibre laser, from which we obtained 6.5 W of single polarization tunable output in the range of 1070 to 1106 nm. As a free running laser, the system produced 18 W at 1090 nm and showed a threshold of 1.8 Watts. The experiment is our first approach for developing a reliable high-power Yb3+-doped fibre source, that could be used in conjunction with optical parametric oscillators (OPO) and amplifiers (OPA) to frequency convert to a broad band of wavelengths. Using a new design of ytterbium-doped fibre made in-house with the conventional modified chemical vapor deposition (MCVD) process, we explored the possibilities of energy storage with such a large mode area (LMA) fibre. The fibre system was capable of delivering energetic pulses of >2 mJ, which could suggest the feasibility of a pulsed fibre laser in the region of tens of milli-Joules. The experiment is described in Chapter Six, on which the experiment that uses the tapered fibre laser in Q-Switched regime is also described and compared to LMA fibre laser. Gaussian-type pulses were obtained which reached pulse energies of 0.6 mJ at 4 kHz using a tapered fibre laser and 1.3 mJ at 500 Hz using conventional laser, corresponding to average powers of 2.1 Watts for the tapered laser and 0.8 watts for the conventional laser. Er3+/Yb3+-doped fibre lasers were part of our experimental work. This co-doping technique allows pumping of Yb3+ ions using broad-stripe high-power pump sources to reach much higher output power levels. Efficient energy transfer from excited Ytterbium ions into Erbium is achieved. From a preliminary study, the fibre laser showed a threshold of 160 mW and a slope efficiency of 49% with respect to absorbed pump power. The maximum output power was 6.2 watts at 1535 nm and a linewidth of 1 nm. One of our co-doped fibre devices produced 16.8 W of continuous wave, multimode laser power at the interesting wavelength of operation of 1550 nm. Finally, conclusions and future work are included in Chapter Eight.

The work of this thesis is focused on two research lines: the first on the development of high power fibre lasers, the second on the development of bioresorbable, inorganic optical devices. The common aspect of these two lines is the use of phosphate glasses as a base material for the fabrication of specialty optical fibres. Phosphate glasses are extremely interesting materials in virtue of the unique combination of their properties. They have been widely exploited in laser science as active gain media, due to the high solubility of rare earths in the glass matrix, and to the high absorption/emission cross section. Calcium phosphate glasses, on the other hand, have been studied as promising biomaterials due to their solubility in aqueous media, and to the ability of being safely reabsorbed by the human body. The thesis starts with a literature review on the use of phosphate glasses in the fabrication of optical fibres and lasers. The properties of rare earth doped glasses are reviewed and a detailed description of the quenching phenomena in doped glasses reported and compared to the major results obtained in the literature. The study of the literature reveals how the issues of heat dissipation, thermal expansion and mechanical stability are still relevant problems in the field of high power lasers. These issues were studied in the course of the thesis. Results obtained on the development of a Nd3+- doped phosphate cane laser are reported in Chapter 5. Cane lasers have the same core/cladding structure that is typical of an optical fibre, but present a much larger diameter. This allows an increased mechanical stability of the device, combined with the easy cooling and good beam quality that are typical for a fibre laser. The development of a first prototype of a phosphate cane laser required the fabrication of a suitable glass (namely CL) that is featured by an exceptional matching of thermo-mechanical properties between core and cladding. A core glass composition (CL1:Nd) and a cladding glass composition (CL1) that present a difference in the glass transition temperature of only 8°C and identical coefficient of thermal expansion were fabricated ad-hoc for this scope. The materials were fully characterized and used for the fabrication of a cane with a diameter of 800μm. Power scaling experiments, performed on a 60mm-long section of the cane, show laser emission at 1054mm, with a maximum output power of 2.5W and a slope efficiency of 44% with respect to the absorbed power. Another issue that emerged from the literature and from the studies of fibre/cane lasers is the interest in developing new fibres with complex geometry. Chapter 4 of this thesis describes work carried on this topic, focusing on the critical step of fabricating and assembling a fibre preform. With the aim to develop rapidly and effectively optical fibre preforms with a wide range of geometries, a project for the in-house development of an extrusion facility in Politecnico di Torino was kick-started. A first prototype of the facility is available, and preliminary results on the extrusion of phosphate glasses are presented. The second part of the thesis is dedicated to the development of resorbable optical materials. An overview on the use of calcium phosphate glasses in the biomedical field is given, with particular interest in the use of glass fibres in biomedical applications. Subsequently, the results obtained on the use of resorbable glasses in biophotonics are reported. The idea at the basis of this research is to combine in a single device the two main field of application of phosphate glasses: the biomedical field and the optical one. This becomes particularly interesting as it enables fabricating multifunctional optical devices, which are of interest in optical sensing and photo-therapy. In particular, the bioresorbability minimizes the impact of the therapies, eliminating the need of removal surgery. Chapter 4 reports a detailed description of the design, fabrication and characterization of transparent calcium phosphate glasses. The materials show a window of transparency ranging from 240 to 2600nm, therefore are able to guide light in the near UV region, and the refractive index can be tailored according to the composition. The glasses proved to be stable against devitrification and suitable for fibre drawing. Single material fibres were fabricated and proved to be soluble in aqueous media, in simulated physiological conditions. Once the fabrication of the material is complete, resorbable glasses were used for the fabrication of single and multi-mode optical fibres. Step index fibres were fabricated using the rod in tube technique and the attenuation loss was measured by cut-back method. The fibres showed values of attenuation loss between 5 and 15dB/m in the visible region and from 2 to 5dB/m in the near infra-red. These values are from one to two orders of magnitude lower than those reported in literature for other resorbable optical devices. These results paved the way towards the application of such fibres for the inscription of fibre Bragg-gratings and for the use in time-domain diffuse optics experiments. Preliminary results on these topics are presented in Chapter 6. Finally, resorbable hollow fibres were fabricated by drawing a tube-shaped preform. These fibres were used for obtaining a controlled release of a photosensitive drug, that could be activated by the light guided trough the same fibre. Experiments on the controlled release of drugs are still ongoing, and involved the development of a silanization method for phosphate glasses, in order to increase the release time of drugs.