High energy short pulse fiber laser achieved by combining pulse shaping, polarization shaping and spectral shaping

• US 20080089366A1
• Filed: 05/15/2007
• Published: 04/17/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/15/2006
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Polaronyx, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Polaronyx, Inc.
• Inventors: Liu, Jian
• Application Number:
  US11/803,978
• Publication Number:
  US 20080089366A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 372/6
• CPC Class Codes: H01S 3/0057 Temporal shaping, e.g. pulse compression, frequency chirping soliton generation and propagation G02F1/3513, H01S3/063 and H01S3/108
• CPC Class Codes: H01S 3/067 Fibre lasers
• CPC Class Codes: H01S 3/06725 Fibre characterized by a specific dispersion, e.g. for pulse shaping in soliton lasers or for dispersion compensating [DCF]
• CPC Class Codes: H01S 3/06741 Photonic crystal fibre, i.e. the fibre having a photonic bandgap
• CPC Class Codes: H01S 3/06754 Fibre amplifiers H01S3/06708 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H01S 3/094007 Cladding pumping, i.e. pump light propagating in a clad surrounding the active core
• CPC Class Codes: H01S 3/1618 ytterbium
• CPC Class Codes: H01S 3/2316 Cascaded amplifiers

Abstract

A fiber laser system includes a fiber mode-locking oscillator, a fiber stretcher, a multistage amplifier chain, a pulse picker, and a compressor wherein at least a device for performing a pulse shaping, a spectral shaping and a polarization shaping and a combination thereof is implemented in the fiber mode-locking oscillator, the fiber stretcher, the multistage amplifier chain, the pulse picker, and the compressor for managing and reducing nonlinear effects in the fiber laser system. The combinations of pulse shaping, spectral shaping and polarization shaping in different stages of the fiber laser system enables the fiber laser system to generate a short pulse of <200 fs and a high energy laser in a range between 1 uJ to over mJ and an average power from 1 W to 100 W.

Claims

1. A fiber laser system comprising:

a fiber mode-locking oscillator, a fiber stretcher, a multistage amplifier chain, a pulse picker, and a compressor wherein at least a device for performing a pulse shaping, a spectral shaping a polarization shaping, and/or a combination of two or three techniques thereof is implemented in said fiber mode-locking oscillator, said fiber stretcher, said multistage amplifier chain, said pulse picker, and said compressor for managing and reducing nonlinear effects in said fiber laser system.

2. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

at least one of said fiber mode-locking oscillator, said fiber stretcher, said multistage amplifier chain, said pulse picker, and said compressor are implemented with at least one of a filter, a polarization controller, a polarization splitter, an isolator, an acoustic filter, and/or a special spectral filter, to carry out said pulse shaping, spectral shaping, polarization shaping, and/or a combination of two or three techniques of said pulse shaping, polarization shaping and spectral shaping thereof.

3. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said combinations of pulse shaping, spectral shaping and polarization shaping in different stages of said fiber laser system for generating a short pulse of 100 fs to 10 ps and a high energy laser in a range between 1 uJ to over mJ and an average power from 1 W to 100 W.

4. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said fiber mode-locking oscillator includes a photonic crystal (PC) fiber or a PBG fiber for providing both normal and anomalous dispersions for generating predefined dispersions and dispersion slopes to match nonlinearity of said fiber mode-locking oscillator to provide optimally narrowed pulse.

5. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said fiber mode-locking oscillator includes a fiber-based inline polarizing isolator and polarization controllers for carrying out a polarization filtering to further mange both dispersion and dispersion slopes in said fiber mode-locking oscillator.

6. The fiber laser system of claim 4 wherein:

said polarizing isolator further comprising a high extinction ratio isolator only allowing one linear polarization to pass through over a wide spectrum.

7. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said fiber mode-locking oscillator further includes an optical coupler connected to an oscillator output fiber and a fiber Photonic crystal (PC) fiber or a Photonic band gap (PGB) fiber connected to said optical coupler.

8. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said fiber mode-locking oscillator further includes an optical coupler connected to an oscillator output fiber and a fiber Photonic crystal (PC) fiber or a Photonic band gap (PGB) fiber connected to said optical coupler for extracting highly chirped pulse of hundreds of ps directly out from said fiber mode-locking oscillator.

9. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said fiber stretcher further includes a fiber of flat dispersion over a range of a predefined spectral band.

10. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said fiber stretcher further includes a fiber of flat or a negative slope dispersion over a range over a spectral band around 1020-1090 nm.

11. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said fiber stretcher further includes a fiber for dispersively stretching a pulse over 100 ps.

12. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said fiber stretcher further includes a fiber with a depressed cladding structure having a flat dispersion over a range over a spectral band.

13. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said multistage amplifier chain further includes a first fiber amplifier stage included a polarization controller and a polarization beam splitter for carrying out a function of spectral and polarization shaping.

14. The fiber laser system of claim 13 wherein:

said multistage amplifier chain further includes a polarization maintenance (PM) fiber.

15. The fiber laser system of claim 13 wherein:

said multistage amplifier chain further includes a non-polarization maintenance (non-PM) fiber.

16. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said pulse picker further includes an acousto optical modulator driven by a RF signal for down-selecting pulses for generating a predefined spectral bandwidth and shape by modifying an RF waveform and frequency of said RF signal for further enhancing an operation of spectral shaping.

17. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said multistage amplifier chain further includes a second fiber amplifier stage implemented with a second pulse picker for preventing a performance degradation due to a noise for a sampling rate lower than 100 Khz.

18. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said multistage amplifier chain further includes a second fiber amplifier stage implemented with a polarization maintenance (PM) fiber to maintain a spectral shape and keep a polarization unchanged from a pulse picker outputting a.

19. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said multistage amplifier chain further includes a second fiber amplifier stage implemented with a filter to further clean up a noise band outside a signal band and modify a spectrum to compensate nonlinear effects generated in said fiber laser system.

20. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said multistage amplifier chain further includes a second fiber amplifier stage includes a filter having various of shapes, in addition to a transform limited shapes of Gaussian or parabolic shapes, including a triangular shape and an unsymmetrical shape, for achieving a specific pulse shaping performance.

21. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said multistage amplifier chain further includes a thin film filter, or an acousto-optic filter, or a spatial light modulator, or a polarization controller and a PBS for performing a spectral shaping.

22. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said multistage amplifier chain further includes a polarization controller and/or a polarizer and/or a wave retarder for performing a polarization shaping.

23. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said multistage amplifier chain further includes a high power amplifier stage implemented with a high concentration double cladding (DC) Yb-doped photonics crystal (PC) fiber as a gain medium coupling to a high power pump.

24. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said multistage amplifier chain further includes a high power amplifier stage implemented with a high concentration double cladding (DC) Yb-doped photonics crystal (PC) fiber with a large mode area (LMA) as a gain medium coupling to a high power pump.

25. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said compressor further comprising a piece of air core photonics band gap (PBG) fiber for providing a large anomalous dispersion.

26. The fiber laser system of claim 25 wherein:

said piece of air core photonics band gap (PBG) fiber providing a large anomalous dispersion approximately 40-200 ps/nm/km

27. The fiber laser system of claim 24 wherein:

said high concentration double cladding (DC) Yb-doped photonics crystal (PC) fiber is a PM fiber.

28. The fiber laser system of claim 24 wherein:

said high concentration double cladding (DC) Yb-doped photonics crystal (PC) fiber is a non-PM fiber.

29. The fiber laser system of claim 26 wherein:

said high concentration double cladding (DC) Yb-doped photonics crystal (PC) fiber with a LMA having a core diameter substantially about 40-200 μ

m.

30. The fiber laser system of claim 1 wherein:

said multistage amplifier chain further includes a high power amplifier stage that further comprising an end cap of a piece of a coreless fiber or glass attached to a PBG fiber whereby a mode area of an output beam at an end facet is increased.