Önder Akçaalan

Ablation-cooled material removal with ultrafast bursts of pulses

The use of femtosecond laser pulses allows precise and thermal-damage-free removal of material (ablation) with wide-ranging scientific, medical and industrial applications. However, its potential is limited by the low speeds at which material can be removed and the complexity of the associated laser technology. The complexity of the laser design arises from the need to overcome the high pulse energy threshold for efficient ablation. However, the use of more powerful lasers to increase the ablation rate results in unwanted effects such as shielding, saturation and collateral damage from heat accumulation at higher laser powers. Here we circumvent this limitation by exploiting ablation cooling, in analogy to a technique routinely used in aerospace engineering. We apply ultrafast successions (bursts) of laser pulses to ablate the target material before the residual heat deposited by previous pulses diffuses away from the processing region. Proof-of-principle experiments on various substrates demonstrate that extremely high repetition rates, which make ablation cooling possible, reduce the laser pulse energies needed for ablation and increase the efficiency of the removal process by an order of magnitude over previously used laser parameters. We also demonstrate the removal of brain tissue at two cubic millimetres per minute and dentine at three cubic millimetres per minute without any thermal damage to the bulk.

1 mJ pulse bursts from a Yb-doped fiber amplifier

We demonstrate burst-mode operation of a polarization-maintaining Yb-doped fiber amplifier capable of generating 60 μJ pulses within bursts of 11 pulses with extremely uniform energy distribution facilitated by a novel feedback mechanism shaping the seed of the burst-mode amplifier. The burst energy can be scaled up to 1 mJ, comprising 25 pulses with 40 μJ average individual energy. The amplifier is synchronously pulse pumped to minimize amplified spontaneous emission between the bursts. Pulse propagation is entirely in fiber and fiber-integrated components until the grating compressor, which allows for highly robust operation. The burst repetition rate is set to 1 kHz and spacing between individual pulses is 10 ns. The 40 μJ pulses are externally compressible to a full width at half-maximum of 600 fs. However, due to the substantial pedestal of the compressed pulses, the effective pulse duration is longer, estimated to be 1.2 ps.

Doping management for high-power fiber lasers: 100 W, few-picosecond pulse generation from an all-fiber-integrated amplifier

Thermal effects, which limit the average power, can be minimized by using low-doped, longer gain fibers, whereas the presence of nonlinear effects requires use of high-doped, shorter fibers to maximize the peak power. We propose the use of varying doping levels along the gain fiber to circumvent these opposing requirements. By analogy to dispersion management and nonlinearity management, we refer to this scheme as doping management. As a practical first implementation, we report on the development of a fiber laser-amplifier system, the last stage of which has a hybrid gain fiber composed of high-doped and low-doped Yb fibers. The amplifier generates 100 W at 100 MHz with pulse energy of 1 μJ. The seed source is a passively mode-locked fiber oscillator operating in the all-normal-dispersion regime. The amplifier comprises three stages, which are all-fiber-integrated, delivering 13 ps pulses at full power. By optionally placing a grating compressor after the first stage amplifier, chirp of the seed pulses can be controlled, which allows an extra degree of freedom in the interplay between dispersion and self-phase modulation. This way, the laser delivers 4.5 ps pulses with ~200 kW peak power directly from fiber, without using external pulse compression.

High-speed, thermal damage-free ablation of brain tissue with femtosecond pulse bursts

We report a novel ultrafast burst mode fiber laser system and results on ablation of rat brain tissue at rates approaching an order of magnitude improvement over previous reports, with no discernible thermal damage.

Ablation-cooled material removal at high speed with femtosecond pulse bursts

We report exploitation of ablation cooling, well-known in rocket design, to remove materials, including metals, silicon, hard and soft tissue. Exciting possibilities include ablation using sub-microjoule pulses with efficiencies of 100-μJ pulses.

Compact 1.5-GHz intra-burst repetition rate Yb-doped all-PM-fiber laser system for ablation-cooled material removal

Femtosecond (fs) laser pulse sources have become increasingly popular in the last decade as a result of their practical features, such as insensitivity to environmental variations, versatile designs, high power outputs. However, much of the progress is with non-integrated specialty fibers, which involve some compromise on these practical features. Monolithic fiber chirped pulse amplification (CPA) systems are very attractive for industrial and scientific applications due to the features such as compactness, reliability and robustness. Although fs fiber laser systems are powerful technologies for material and tissue processing, limited ablation rates and high energy are drawbacks. Recently, we identified a new regime of laser-material interaction, ablation cooled material removal [1], where the repetition rate has to be high enough so that the targeted spot size cannot cool down substantially by heat conduction which scales down ablation threshold by several orders of magnitude and reduces thermal effects to the bulk of the target. Here, we demonstrate a compact all-PM-fiber laser amplifier system with an intra-burst repetition rate of 1.5 GHz able to produce bursts ranging from 20-ns to 65-ns duration with 20 μJ to 80 μJ total energy, respectively, and pulses with up to 1 μJ individual energy at burst repetition rates ranging from 25 kHz to 200 kHz (Fig. 1(a)). The seed signal is generated by a home-built all-normal dispersion oscillator with a spectrum centered at 1035 nm and 20-nm (FWHM), 100 mW output and 385 MHz repetition rate (Fig. 1(b)). After the oscillator, rest of the system is built of polarization maintaining (PM) components and a single-mode pre-amplifier controls both dispersion and nonlinearity in the amplifier system. The pulses are stretched with a 110 m-long fiber after this pre-amplifier and raised to a repetition rate of 1.5 GHz by a multiplier. The signal is amplified again by a second single-mode pre-amplifier before converted into burst-mode via an acousto-optic modulator (AOM). Finally, a forward-pumped double-clad power amplifier, built of PM 10/125 Yb 1200 DC (nLight) fiber and pumped by a 18-W wavelength stabilized diode, boosts the optical power. To compress the pulses, a pair of 1200 line/mm transmission gratings is preferred to denser gratings to limit third order dispersion (TOD). Further, fiber lengths are shortened as much as possible to minimize nonlinear effects including Raman scattering and thus the power conversion efficiency is relatively low, around 20% for the power amplifier. The autocorrelation measurement for the compressed pulses indicates a width of ∼250 fs (Fig. 1(d)). The amplified output spectrum of FWHM of 14 nm is shown in (Fig. 1(c)).

All-Fiber Laser Systems That Can Operate in Burst Mode

Fiber lasers which operate in burst-mode where densely spaced pulses occur inside bursts repeated at much lower repetition rates can be valuable tool for sensing and imaging. We introduce such lasers and propose possible applications.

All-fiber nanosecond laser system generating supercontinuum spectrum for photoacoustic imaging

Photoacoustic microscopy (PAM) research, as an imaging modality, has shown promising results in imaging angiogenesis and cutaneous malignancies like melanoma, revealing systemic diseases including diabetes, hypertension, coronery artery, cardiovascular disease from their effect on the microvasculature, tracing drug efficiency and assessment of therapy, monitoring healing processes such as wound cicatrization, brain imaging and mapping, neuroscientific evaluations. Clinically, PAM can be used as a diagnostic and predictive medicine tool; even have a part in disease prevention[1].Parameters of the laser used in PAM, such as pulse duration, energy, PRF (pulse repetition frequency), and pulse-to-pulse stability affect signal amplitude and quality, data acquisition speed and obliquely the spatial resolution. Current lasers used in photoacoustic imaging are commercially available Q-switched lasers, low-power laser diodes, and very recently, fiber lasers with non-adjustable properties. In all of these systems, the key parameters cannot be adjusted independently of each other, bringing about certain systematic limitations on optimization of current microscopy systems. For example, microvasculature and cellular imaging require rather different laser properties. Thus, there is need for a laser system that offers largely independent control over the key parameters. Here, we report a unique, all-fiber-integrated, fiber laser system producing nanosecond pulses covering a wavelength range of 600 nm to 1100 nm, developed specifically as a source for photoacoustic excitation. The system comprises of an oscillator (Yb-doped NOLM laser) and amplifier, which generates and amplifies nanosecond pulses respectively, an acousto-optic modulator to control pulse repetition rate and a photonic-crystal fiber to generate supercontinuum. Complete control over the pulse train, including generation of non-uniform pulse trains, is achieved via the AOM through custom-developed field-programmable gate-array (FPGA) electronics. The system is unique in terms of offering adjustability for all the important parameters over broad ranges, namely, the pulse duration (1-3 or longer ns), pulse energy (up to 10 μJ, e.g., at 50 kHz) and repetition rate (50 kHz - 3 MHz). Moreover, different photocoustic imaging probes can be excited using this single laser system thanks to its broadspectrum output (600 nm to 1300 nm) based on supercontinuum generation. The entire system is fiber-integrated, meaning that beam propagation is waveguided in fiber everywhere, making it misalignment free and largely immune to mechanical vibrations. The laser system is robust, compact, low-cost and built using only readily available standard components.

A novel fiber laser development for photoacoustic microscopy

Photoacoustic microscopy, as an imaging modality, has shown promising results in imaging angiogenesis and cutaneous malignancies like melanoma, revealing systemic diseases including diabetes, hypertension, tracing drug efficiency and assessment of therapy, monitoring healing processes such as wound cicatrization, brain imaging and mapping. Clinically, photoacoustic microscopy is emerging as a capable diagnostic tool. Parameters of lasers used in photoacoustic microscopy, particularly, pulse duration, energy, pulse repetition frequency, and pulse-to-pulse stability affect signal amplitude and quality, data acquisition speed and indirectly, spatial resolution. Lasers used in photoacoustic microscopy are typically Q-switched lasers, low-power laser diodes, and recently, fiber lasers. Significantly, the key parameters cannot be adjusted independently of each other, whereas microvasculature and cellular imaging, e.g., have different requirements. Here, we report an integrated fiber laser system producing nanosecond pulses, covering the spectrum from 600 nm to 1100 nm, developed specifically for photoacoustic excitation. The system comprises of Yb-doped fiber oscillator and amplifier, an acousto-optic modulator and a photonic-crystal fiber to generate supercontinuum. Complete control over the pulse train, including generation of non-uniform pulse trains, is achieved via the AOM through custom-developed field-programmable gate-array electronics. The system is unique in that all the important parameters are adjustable: pulse duration in the range of 1-3 ns, pulse energy up to 10 μJ, repetition rate from 50 kHz to 3 MHz. Different photocoustic imaging probes can be excited with the ultrabroad spectrum. The entire system is fiber-integrated; guided-beam-propagation rendersit misalignment free and largely immune to mechanical perturbations. The laser is robust, low-cost and built using readily available components.