Generation of picosecond pulses directly from a 100 W, burst-mode, doping-managed Yb-doped fiber amplifier

Hectowatt-level GHz burst-mode all-fiber laser based on dissipative soliton resonance

We demonstrate a high power Yb-doped burst-mode all-fiber laser system operating at GHz intra-burst repetition rate. To our knowledge, it is the first report utilizing dissipative soliton resonance (DSR) to generate tunable burst-mode rectangular pulses. Due to the tunable duration and the rapid rise/fall time for DSR pulses, a 1-10 ns adjustable burst pulse duration is achieved. The intra-burst with sinusoidal waveform can be tuned from 0.8 GHz to 1.5 GHz and actively modulated by an electro-optic modulator (EOM). Amplified by a three-stage Yb-doped fiber amplifier (YDFA), the output power achieves 304 W at 10 ns of burst duration, and the maximum peak power reaches over 50 kW at 2 ns of burst duration. This laser system is anticipated to be applied to generate high power arbitrary microwave signal.

High-power modelocked thin-disk oscillators as potential technology for high-rate material processing

High average power femtosecond lasers have made spectacular progress in the last decades - moving from laboratory-based systems with maximum average powers of tens of watts to kilowatt-class mature industrial systems in a short time. The availability of such systems opens new possibilities in many fields; one of the most prominent ones that have driven many of these technological advances is precise high-speed material processing, where ultrashort pulses have long been recognized to provide highest precision processing of virtually any material, and high average power extends these capabilities to highest processing rates. Here, we focus our attention on one high-average power technology with large unexplored potential for this specific application: directly modelocked multi-MHz repetition frequency high-power thin-disk oscillators. We review their latest state-of-the-art and discuss future directions and challenges, specifically with this application field in mind.

Optical parametric oscillator pumped by a 100-kHz burst-mode Yb-doped fiber laser

We demonstrate an optical parametric oscillator pumped at a repetition rate of 100 kHz by a burst-mode Yb-doped fiber laser. Pulse energies of 1.5 µJ were generated with five 4.8-µJ pump pulses. Pulse-to-pulse fluctuations could be suppressed even when only five pump pulses were used. The measured pulse length was 190 fs, which was considerably shorter than the 350-fs pump pulse length. The burst-mode operation is an easy and powerful way to increase the pulse energies of optical parametric oscillators pumped with femtosecond pulses.

Nonlinear ultrafast fiber amplifiers beyond the gain-narrowing limit

Ultrafast lasers are becoming increasingly widespread in science and industry alike. Fiber-based ultrafast laser sources are especially attractive because of their compactness, alignment-free setups, and potentially low cost. However, confining short pulses within a fiber core leads to high intensities, which drives a host of nonlinear effects. While these phenomena and their interactions greatly complicate the design of such systems, they can also provide opportunities for engineering new capabilities. Here, we report a new fiber amplification regime distinguished by the use of a dynamically evolving gain spectrum as a degree of freedom: as a pulse experiences nonlinear spectral broadening, absorption and amplification actively reshape both the pulse and the gain spectrum itself. The dynamic co-evolution of the field and excited-state populations supports pulses that can broaden spectrally by almost two orders of magnitude and well beyond the gain bandwidth, while remaining cleanly compressible to their sub-50-fs transform limit. Theory and experiments provide evidence that a nonlinear attractor underlies the management of the nonlinearity by the gain. Further research into these mutual, pulse-inversion propagation dynamics may address open scientific questions and pave the way toward simple, compact fiber sources that produce high-energy, sub-30-fs pulses.

High-power Yb-based all-fiber laser delivering 300 fs pulses for high-speed ablation-cooled material removal

We report on a 72 W Yb all-fiber ultrafast laser system with 1.6 GHz intra-burst and 200 kHz burst repetition rate developed to demonstrate ablation-cooled material removal at high speeds. Up to 24 W is applied on Cu and Si samples with pulses of ∼300  fs, and record-high ablation efficiencies are obtained, compared to published results to date, despite using only ∼100  nJ pulses. Ablation speeds approaching 1  mm³/s are reported with 24 W of average power, limited by available laser power and beam scanning speed. More significantly, these results experimentally confirm the theoretically expected linear scaling of the ablation-cooled regime to higher average powers without sacrificing efficiency, which implies that further scaling is possible with further increases in laser power and scanning speeds.

Burst-mode thulium all-fiber laser delivering femtosecond pulses at a 1 GHz intra-burst repetition rate

We report on the development of, to the best of our knowledge, the first ultrafast burst-mode laser system operating at a central wavelength of approximately 2 μm, where water absorption and, consequently, the absorption of most biological tissue is very high. The laser comprises a harmonically mode-locked 1-GHz oscillator, which, in turn, seeds a fiber amplifier chain. The amplifier produces 500 ns long bursts containing 500 pulses with 1 GHz intra-burst and 50 kHz inter-burst repetition rates, respectively, at an average power of 1 W, corresponding to 40 nJ pulse and 20 μJ burst energies, respectively. The entire system is built in an all-fiber architecture and implements dispersion management such that output pulses are delivered directly from a single-mode fiber with a duration of 340 fs without requiring any external compression. This gigahertz-repetition-rate system is intended for ablation-cooled laser material removal in the 2 μm wavelength region, which is interesting for laser surgery due to the exceptionally high tissue absorption at this wavelength.

100 μJ pulse energy in burst-mode-operated hybrid fiber-bulk amplifier system with envelope shaping

A theoretical method was proposed to compensate the burst envelope distortion in a solid-state master-oscillator power-amplifier (MOPA) system operating in burst mode at an intra-burst repetition rate of 40 MHz. Arbitrary envelope shapes were achieved at inter-burst repetition rate of 100 kHz with 40 pulses in the burst, showing excellent agreement with the calculated ones. This is the first demonstration of arbitrary burst envelope without an adaptive feedback loop in a solid-state laser system. The maximum pulse energy of 100 μJ was achieved at inter-burst repetition rate of 40 kHz, with 10 pulses in the burst.

Burst-mode-operated, sub-nanosecond fiber MOPA system incorporating direct seed-packet shaping

We report a novel burst-mode-operated sub-nanosecond fiber Master Oscillator, Power Amplifier (MOPA) system incorporating direct seed-packet shaping without external modulators. A fast digital-to-analog converter with 1 Gsps sampling rate and 16 bit resolution was developed to control the pulse amplitudes and sequences of a distributed feedback semiconductor seed laser to realize packet-shaped burst mode operation. Optical pulses with durations as short as 700 ps and peak power as high as 1 W can be generated from the seed by applying proper reverse voltages after positive electrical pulses to the laser driver to cancel the residual charges at its gate electrode. The average power of the laser can be amplified to nearly 40 W with FWHM spectral linewidth of ~0.12 nm after three stages of polarization maintaining fiber amplifiers. Different packet shapes including ramp-off, Gaussian, square and double rectangle can be produced from the fiber MOPA by finely pre-shaping the seed pulse bursts. It is believed that such a laser has provided a cost-effective solution to the generation of pulse bursts with arbitrary packet shapes for different practical applications including material micromachining and nonlinear frequency conversion.

110 W all-fiber picosecond master oscillator power amplifier based on large-core-diameter ytterbium-doped fiber

We demonstrate an all-fiber picosecond fiber laser in a master oscillator power amplifier configuration. The seed source is a soliton-type passively mode-locked Yb-doped fiber laser by a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror and chirped fiber Bragg grating. The pulse width of the seed laser is 4.5 ps with a repetition rate of 15 MHz. A highly doped active fiber with a large core diameter (50 μm) is employed to boost the average power of the seed pulses to 117 W with 11 ps pulse width and 709 kW peak power. The corresponding output beam quality factor at maximum output power is 3.7. The all-fiber construction of the whole laser system enables compact size and robust operation.

High power fiber MOPA based QCW laser delivering pulses with arbitrary duration on demand at high modulation bandwidth

We report on a concept of a fiber MOPA based quasi-CW laser working at high modulation bandwidths up to 40 MHz capable of producing arbitrary pulse durations at arbitrary repetition rates. An output power of over 100 W was achieved and an on-off contrast of 25 dB. The laser features a dual-channel (dual-wavelength) seed source, a double stage YDF amplifier and a volume-Bragg-grating-based signal de-multiplexer. Minimization of transients was conducted through experiment and model analysis.

Burst shaping in a fiber-amplifier chain seeded by a gain-switched laser diode

A low-power source, such as a gain-switched laser diode, usually requires several amplification stages to reach sufficient power levels. When operating in burst mode, a correct input burst shape must be determined in order to compensate for gain saturation of all amplifier stages. In this paper we report on closed-form equations that enable saturation compensation in multiamplifier setups, which eliminates the need for an adaptive feedback loop. The theoretical model is then evaluated in an experimental setup.

Compact, high-pulse-energy, high-power, picosecond master oscillator power amplifier

We report a compact, stable, gain-switched-diode-seeded master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA), employing direct amplification via conventional Yb(3+)-doped fibers, to generate picosecond pulses with energy of 17.7 μJ and 97-W average output power (excluding amplified spontaneous emission) at 5.47-MHz repetition frequency in a diffraction-limited and single-polarization beam. A maximum peak power of 197 kW is demonstrated. Such a high-energy, high-power, MHz, picosecond MOPA is of great interest for high-throughput material processing. With 13.8-μJ pulse energy confined in the 0.87-nm 3-dB spectral bandwidth, this MOPA is also a promising source for nonlinear frequency conversion to generate high-energy pulses in other spectral regions. We have explored the pulse energy scaling until the stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) becomes significant (i.e. spectral peak intensity exceeds 1% of that of the signal).

Pulse bursts with a controllable number of pulses from a mode-locked Yb-doped all fiber laser system

Pulse bursts with a controllable number of pulses per burst have been produced directly from a mode-locked Yb-doped fiber laser for the first time. Each output burst contained numerous pulses with a high pulse repetition rate of 29.4 MHz. The duration of a single pulse was 680 ps. The pulse burst had a repetition rate of 251.6 kHz. The pulse burst could easily be further amplified to a total pulse burst energy of ~795 nJ, corresponding to a total average power of 200 mW.