OSE6938U - Fiber Lasers

Pre-Requisites: OSE 6525 Laser Engineering

Course Objective:

Graduate students interested in research and development of fiber lasers or closely related technologies acquire and discuss information on fiber lasers from basic concepts to design and performance of state-of-the-art devices.

Summary:

Lasers can be found everywhere – at checkout counters in supermarkets to scan barcodes; in copiers, printers, and DVD players; in industrial settings to do materials processing such as marking, drilling, cutting, and welding; in science and engineering for precise measurements of time, distance, temperature, fluid velocity, etc.; in high-speed, high-bandwidth communication systems; and in imaging and remote sensing applications.

Lasers come in many varieties. Fiber lasers technology has been improving dramatically over the two past decades, making fiber lasers serious contenders for many laser application. Fiber laser technology capitalizes on the rapid development of fiber optic components and advances in high power semiconductor diode lasers to create highly compact and reliable light sources in an all-fiber format. In particular, high-power fiber lasers are attracting much interest among researchers and industry professionals. Several kilowatts of optical power have been generated from a single fiber core using tens of meters of amplifying fiber. Other applications require integration of lasers into compact devices. Sometimes narrow emission spectra or even single frequency operation is needed. For these applications, it is critical to develop special short-length fiber lasers. The flexibility of the fiber optics platform will make fiber lasers a frequent choice to satisfy increasing needs for laser in many fields of application.

This course combines an introduction to fiber lasers with detailed technical discussions based on reviews of recent progress and latest developments in fiber laser research.

Content:

• Introduction to fiber lasers: history, recent developments, and state-of-the art
• Laser fibers - design and fabrication
• Materials for fiber lasers, glass hosts and rare earth dopants
• Fiber laser cavities: fiber gratings and DFB lasers
• Pumping schemes, side and end pumping
• Nonlinear effects: Brillouin scattering, Raman scattering, photodarkening
• State-of-the-art fiber laser systems:
  • continuous wave and pulsed lasers
  • oscillators and master oscillator/power amplifiers
  • single frequency lasers
• Beam combining:
  • coherent and incoherent
  • active and passive

Course Assignments/Exams

• Current research papers will be distributed and students will have to study them.
• Each student will be asked to select two papers/subjects for presentation.
• By the end of the semester, the students will be required to submit a report on a fiber laser special topic.

Grading Procedures:

The course will be graded in A-F

Anticipated Number of Students: up to 8