Injection locked high power laser systems

• US 20070041409A1
• Filed: 08/19/2005
• Published: 02/22/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 08/19/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Corning Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Corning Incorporated
• Inventors: Wang, Ji, Sudarshanam, Venkatapuram, Kuksenkov, Dmitri, Walton, Donnell, Zenteno, Luis
• Application Number:
  US11/207,378
• Publication Number:
  US 20070041409A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 372/6
• CPC Class Codes: H01S 3/067 Fibre lasers
• CPC Class Codes: H01S 3/10 Controlling the intensity, frequency, phase, polarisation or direction of the emitted radiation, e.g. switching, gating, modulating or demodulating
• CPC Class Codes: H01S 3/10092 Coherent seed, e.g. injection locking
• CPC Class Codes: H01S 3/1086 using scattering effects, e.g. Raman or Brillouin effect
• CPC Class Codes: H01S 3/109 Frequency multiplication, e.g. harmonic generation

Abstract

A high power laser system comprising: a master laser; and a primary slave laser oscillator including a cavity comprising a rare earth doped fiber, said primary slave laser oscillator being actively injection-locked to said master laser, wherein said cavity provides an output exceeding 1 W of optical power.

Claims

1. A high power laser system comprising:

(I) a master laser;

(II) a primary slave laser oscillator including a cavity comprising a rare earth doped fiber, said primary slave laser oscillator being actively injection-locked to said master laser, wherein said cavity provides an output exceeding 1 W of optical power.

2. The high power laser system according to claim 1 wherein the active optical path length within the earth doped fiber is longer than the passive optical path length within the primary slave laser oscillator.

3. A high power laser system according to claim 1, wherein said cavity of said primary slave laser oscillator includes a phase modulator that is capable of modulating the optical phase within at least a portion of said earth doped fiber to lock the optical signal frequency, and the phase modulator functions as a modal filter.

4. A high power laser system according to claim 1 wherein said rare earth doped fiber is a polarization maintaining fiber.

5. The laser system of claim 4 wherein said rare-earth doped fiber is a single polarization fiber.

6. The laser system of claim 1 wherein said cavity of said primary slave laser oscillator includes a second harmonic generator.

7. The laser system of claim 1 wherein said laser system includes a secondary cavity and said secondary cavity includes a third harmonic generator.

8. The laser system of claim 1 wherein said laser system includes a secondary cavity and said secondary cavity includes a fourth harmonic generator.

9. The laser system of claim 1 wherein said laser system includes a secondary cavity and said secondary cavity includes a fifth harmonic generator.

10. The laser system of claim 6, wherein said laser system includes a secondary cavity and said secondary cavity includes a Raman converter crystal.

11. The laser system of claim 6, wherein said laser system includes a secondary cavity, and wherein said cavity of said primary slave laser oscillator and said secondary cavity share at least one common optical component;

and at least one segment of said secondary cavity is not within said cavity of the primary slave laser oscillator.

12. The laser system of claim 11, wherein said common component is a frequency converter crystal.

13. The laser system of claim 1 wherein said laser system further includes an electro optic modulator coupled to an electro optic modulator driver and said cavity has a cavity length L such that f_mod<

f_cav, where f_mod is the frequency of the EOM driver and f_cav is the cavity spacing, as determined by the cavity length L, and L is greater than 0.25 m.

14. The laser system of claim 1 wherein said cavity does not include a linear polarizer operating in conjunction with said fiber.

15. The high power laser system according to claim 2, wherein said cavity of the primary slave laser oscillator includes a phase modulator that is capable of stretching at least a portion of said earth doped fiber to lock the optical signal frequency.

16. The high power laser system according to claim 15, wherein and the phase modulator functions as a modal filter.

17. The laser system of claim 1, wherein said cavity of said the primary slave laser oscillator includes a second harmonic generator.

18. The laser system of claim 4 wherein said laser system includes a secondary cavity and said secondary cavity includes a higher order harmonic generator, and said higher order harmonic generator is a third, fourth or fifth harmonic generator.

19. A high power laser system according to claim 2 wherein said rare earth doped fiber is a polarization maintaining fiber.

20. The laser system of claim 2 wherein said fiber is a single polarization fiber.

21. The high power laser system of claim 1 further comprising an additional primary slave laser oscillator, and said additional primary slave laser oscillator is injection locked to an additional master laser.

22. The high power laser system of claim 21 further including an intermediary external resonant cavity which is operationally connected to both primary slave laser oscillators.