High Average Power, High Energy Short Pulse Fiber Laser System

Technical Report · Tue Nov 13 04:00:00 EST 2007

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/923999· OSTI ID:923999

Messerly, M J

Recently continuous wave fiber laser systems with output powers in excess of 500W with good beam quality have been demonstrated [1]. High energy, ultrafast, chirped pulsed fiber laser systems have achieved record output energies of 1mJ [2]. However, these high-energy systems have not been scaled beyond a few watts of average output power. Fiber laser systems are attractive for many applications because they offer the promise of high efficiency, compact, robust systems that are turn key. Applications such as cutting, drilling and materials processing, front end systems for high energy pulsed lasers (such as petawatts) and laser based sources of high spatial coherence, high flux x-rays all require high energy short pulses and two of the three of these applications also require high average power. The challenge in creating a high energy chirped pulse fiber laser system is to find a way to scale the output energy while avoiding nonlinear effects and maintaining good beam quality in the amplifier fiber. To this end, our 3-year LDRD program sought to demonstrate a high energy, high average power fiber laser system. This work included exploring designs of large mode area optical fiber amplifiers for high energy systems as well as understanding the issues associated chirped pulse amplification in optical fiber amplifier systems.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-48
• OSTI ID: 923999
• Report Number(s): UCRL-TR-236790
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
AMPLIFICATION
AMPLIFIERS
DRILLING
EFFICIENCY
ENERGY SYSTEMS
FIBERS
LASERS
OPTICAL FIBERS
PROCESSING