Chingyue Wang

Optimization in scaling fiber-coupled laser-diode end-pumped lasers to higher power: influence of thermal effect

The optimum mode-to-pump ratio in scaling fiber-coupled laser-diode end-pumped lasers to higher power has been investigated by including the thermal effect into the space-dependent rate equation analysis. The optical path difference (OPD) distribution has been derived as a function of the pump-beam quality, focus position of pumping light, and pump radius at the focal plane under the assumption that the end faces of the crystal are thermally insulated. The diffraction losses arising from thermally induced spherical aberration have been estimated by the Strehl intensity ratio. The present results for the optimum mode-to-pump ratio are markedly different from previous analyses in which thermal effects are neglected. Here, the optimum mode-to-pump ratio is a decreasing function of input pump power, and is less than unity in the case of a slightly high pump power. The practical example of a Nd:YAG laser pumped by a 13-W fiber-coupled laser diode is considered to confirm our physical analysis.

Generation of Hermite-Gaussian modes in fiber-coupled laser-diode end-pumped lasers

Abstract.A technique has been developed for the generation of Laguerre–Gaussian (LG0,l) modes in a fiber-coupled laser diode end-pumped microchip laser. A theoretical model is also developed to predict how the oscillation of LG0,l modes is affected by the pump position, the pump size and the cavity mode size. With a 1-W fiber-coupled diode, the highest-order LG0,l mode that can be generated is l=23.

Study of high-power diode-end-pumped Nd:YVO4 laser at 1.34 μm: influence of Auger upconversion

Abstract We demonstrated an experimental study of the influence of the Nd 3+ concentration on scaling diode-pumped Nd:YVO 4 1.34-μm lasers to higher power. An output power of 5.1 W at 1.34 μm was obtained with a 0.5-at.% Nd-doped YVO 4 at 13.5 W of incident pump power. The strong dependence of the slope efficiency on the dopant concentration is attributed to an Auger upconversion process.

Multiwatt octave-spanning supercontinuum generation in multicore photonic-crystal fiber

High-power supercontinuum spanning over more than an octave was generated using a high power femtosecond fiber laser amplifier and a multicore nonlinear photonic crystal fiber (PCF). Long multicore PCFs (as long as 20 m in our experiments) are shown to enable supercontinuum generation in an isolated fundamental supermode, with the manifold of other PCF modes suppressed due to the strong evanescent fields coupling between the cores, providing a robust 5.4 W coherent supercontinuum output with a high spatial and spectral quality within the range of wavelengths from 500 to 1700 nm.

Effective surface plasmon polaritons on the metal wire with arrays of subwavelength grooves

In this paper we explore the existence of electromagnetic surface bound modes on a perfect metal wire milled with arrays of subwavelength grooves. The surface modes are axially symmetric transverse magnetic (TM) waves and have the same polarization state with the dominant propagating surface plasmon polaritons on the real metal wires. The dispersion of the fundamental surface mode has close resemblance with the dispersion of the surface plasmon polaritons. Moreover, we note that for TM polarization this metallic structure can be equivalent to a dielectric coated metal wire with defined geometrical parameters and effective refractive index of the dielectric coating. This metallic structure is expected to have some potential applications in the optical research in microwave or THz region.

Influence of thermal effect on output power optimization in fiber-coupled laser-diode end-pumped lasers

A general model has been developed for the output power optimization of fiber-coupled laser-diode end-pumped lasers by including the thermal effect into the analysis. The optical path difference (OPD). Distribution has been derived as a function of the pump-beam quality, focus position of pumping light, and pump radius at the focal plane under the assumption that the end faces of the crystal are thermally insulated. With the derived OPD, the diffraction losses arising from thermal-induced spherical aberration have been estimated by the Strehl intensity ratio. The practical example of an Nd:YVO/sub 4/ laser pumped by a 1.2-W fiber-coupled laser diode is considered to illustrate the utility of the present model. Experimental results have shown a fairly good agreement with the theoretical predictions.

Microdroplet deposition of copper film by femtosecond laser-induced forward transfer

Copper microdroplets were deposited onto a quartz substrate by the laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) using laser pulses of 148fs at a center wavelength of 775nm. The droplets with 2–3μm diameters were transferred at a laser pulse energy slightly above the threshold at which the copper film could be removed completely. The droplet formation was a result of the blow-off of a molten film from the quartz substrate by a compressive stress of plasma when the free surface was melted and was different from the microdroplet formation by the LIFT technique using nanosecond laser pulse.

Environmentally Stable, High Pulse Energy Yb-Doped Large-Mode-Area Photonic Crystal Fiber Laser Operating in the Soliton-Like Regime

A high pulse energy passively mode-locking fiber laser operating in the soliton-like regime is demonstrated. The laser is based on a linear cavity design. A segment of Yb-doped single-polarization large-mode-area photonic crystal fiber serves as the gain medium, and the self-starting mode-locking is achieved by a high contrast semiconductor saturable absorber mirror. The laser directly generates 600-fs pulses with 900 mW of average power at a repetition rate of 47.3 MHz, corresponding to a single pulse energy of 19 nJ. Furthermore, this fiber laser is directly used for pumping ZnTe to generate broadband terahertz radiation, resulting in a compact terahertz source.

Frequency-tunable anti-Stokes line emission by eigenmodes of a birefringent microstructure fiber

Birefringent microstructure fibers are shown to allow efficient generation of frequency-tunable anti-Stokes line emission as a result of nonlinear-optical spectral transformation of unamplified femtosecond Ti: sapphire laser pulses. Femtosecond pulses of 820-nm pump radiation polarized along the fast and slow axes of the elliptical core of the microstructure fiber generate intense blue-shifted lines centered at 490 and 510 nm, respectively, observed as bright blue and green emission at the output of a 10-cm microstructure fiber.

A hollow beam from a holey fiber

A high-quality spectrally isolated hollow beam is produced through a nonlinear-optical transformation of Ti: sapphire laser pulses in a higher order mode of a photonic-crystal fiber (PCF). Instead of a doughnut shape, typical of hollow beams produced by other methods, the far-field image of the hollow-beam PCF output features perfect sixth-order rotation symmetry, dictated by the symmetry of the PCF structure. The frequency of the PCF-generated hollow beam can be tuned by varying the input beam parameters, making a few-mode PCF a convenient and flexible tool for the guiding and trapping of atoms and creation of all-fiber optical tweezers.