Ville Aallos

Progress in direct nanoparticle deposition for the development of the next generation fiber lasers

This paper outlines the most recent work at nLIGHT Oy (formerly Liekki Oy). We give an overview of the current state of the nLIGHT active fiber fabrication technology, discuss the capability of the manufacturing process, and review our results and the results of other groups on the reliability aspects of the manufactured fibers. We also present refractive index tailored and gain tailored Yb doped fibers as examples of recent fiber development.

High Peak Power, Flexible Pulse Parameter, Chirally Coupled Core (3C ® ) Fiber Based Picosecond MOPA Systems

We demonstrate flexible performance in a fiber MOPA system based on nLIGHT’s PFL seed laser platform and chirally coupled core (3C®) fiber. The 33μm core, 27μm MFD 3C fiber used in these demonstrations is fabricated in volume at nLIGHT’s Finland facility. A variety of pulse formats are amplified to nonlinearity-limited peak power <300kW, including single pulses in the 50ps to 1ns regime at a variety of repetition rates from 10’s of kHz to MHz. Beam quality in these 3C based MOPAs is exceptional with M2<1.15 and circularity <95% at all power levels. Beam pointing often evident in other LMA fiber technologies due to higher order mode content is minimal in these fiber MOPAs. Burst mode operation of the seed laser system using flexible burst packet repetition rates (10’s of kHz to several MHz) and adjustable pulse-to-pulse spacing within bursts (<10ns to 100ns) is demonstrated and amplified in the same 3C fibers. Bursts of up to ten 50ps pulses amplified to total energies exceeding 160μJ are demonstrated at 200kHz burst repetition rate and 32W average power at high efficiency (74% slope). Bursts of up to five 500ps pulses are also amplified to up to 360μJ total energy. In both cases, the varying degree of pulse saturation win a burst and mitigation paths are reviewed.

Phosphate-based glass fiber vs. bulk glass: Change in fiber optical response to probe in vitro glass reactivity

This paper investigates the effect of fiber drawing on the thermal and structural properties as well as on the glass reactivity of a phosphate glass in tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane-buffered (TRIS) solution and simulated body fluid (SBF). The changes induced in the thermal properties suggest that the fiber drawing process leads to a weakening and probable re-orientation of the POP bonds. Whereas the fiber drawing did not significantly impact the release of P and Ca, an increase in the release of Na into the solution was noticed. This was probably due to small structural reorientations occurring during the fiber drawing process and to a slight diffusion of Na to the fiber surface. Both the powders from the bulk and the glass fibers formed a Ca-P surface layer when immersed in SBF and TRIS. The layer thickness was higher in the calcium and phosphate supersaturated SBF than in TRIS. This paper for the first time presents the in vitro reactivity and optical response of a phosphate-based bioactive glass (PBG) fiber when immersed in SBF. The light intensity remained constant for the first 48h after which a decrease with three distinct slopes was observed: the first decrease between 48 and 200h of immersion could be correlated to the formation of the Ca-P layer at the fiber surface. After this a faster decrease in light transmission was observed from 200 to ~425h in SBF. SEM analysis suggested that after 200h, the surface of the fiber was fully covered by a thin Ca-P layer which is likely to scatter light. For immersion times longer than ~425h, the thickness of the Ca-P layer increased and thus acted as a barrier to the dissolution process limiting further reduction in light transmission. The tracking of light transmission through the PBG fiber allowed monitoring of the fiber dissolution in vitro. These results are essential in developing new bioactive fiber sensors that can be used to monitor bioresponse in situ.

Narrowband transverse-modal-instability (TMI)-free Yb-doped fiber amplifiers for directed energy applications

We report on the performance of a standard Yb-doped DC-LMA fiber and compare it to a similar core-size chirally-coupled core (3C®) fiber in a co-pumped fiber amplifier configuration. We used Yb-doped 20/400/0.064 DC LMA fiber for the power amplifier and achieved ~2.4 kW of signal power at 2.79 kW of absorbed pump power. However, we observed an onset of TMI at ~2.2 kW. The spectral bandwidth of this amplifier was 20 GHz and there was no sign of SBS at 2.4 kW of output power. We then used an Yb-doped 21.9/400/0.059 DC 3C fiber with a coiling diameter of ~30 cm to test the efficacy of HOM suppression in this fiber with respect to improving TMI threshold. We achieved 2.6 kW of output power (pump combiner limited) without TMI. Further power-scaling experiments are underway and we will report on the latest findings. However, it is clear from these results that 3C fiber has a better HOM suppression capability compared to 10-cm diameter coiled DC-LMA fiber. Even a 30-cm coiled 3C fiber shows no sign of TMI at 2.6 kW; while, a slightly smaller diameter and tightly coiled 10-cm diameter LMA fiber amplifier shows signs of TMI ~ 2.2 kW. We also measured Brillouin shift, gain bandwidth and gain coefficient and they were found to be ~15.3 GHz, ~83 MHz and 0.47 to 0.7 ×10-11 m/W respectively compared to reported values of 16.1 GHz, ~64 MHz and 5 ×10-11 m/W. This significantly lower Brillouin gain and slightly larger gain bandwidth leads to eight times higher SBS threshold for amplifiers using nLIGHT fiber with near single-frequency seed compared to literature values. This is a distinct advantage which will enable optimization of both the LMA and 3C fiber geometry to achieve higher TMI threshold in the future.

Characterization of chirally-coupled-core (3C) fibers fabricated with direct nanoparticle deposition (DND)

We report detailed characterization results of Yb-doped Chirally-Coupled-Core (3C) fibers fabricated with Direct Nanoparticle Deposition (DND) technique. Two types of 3C fibers with core/clad geometries of 34/250μm and 55/400μm and another 25/250μm conventional large-mode-area (LMA) fiber are measured and the results are compared in terms of modal content, transmission spectrum, etc. A picosecond fiber amplifier is built based on 55/400μm 3C fiber, showing robust single-mode operation with peak power >1MW with no sign of stimulated Raman scattering (SRS).

Measuring bend losses in large-mode-area fibers

We investigate the measurement of bend losses in few-mode large-mode-area (LMA) fibers. The influence of the light source spectral characteristics, modal power content and cladding light on the measurement accuracy and precision is studied experimentally. Monte-Carlo simulations are performed to understand the distribution of the variations. This study provides practical guidelines for bend loss measurements.

Mode coupling in large-diameter multi-mode silica optical fibers

We report an experimental study on mode coupling in various large-diameter multi-mode silica optical fibers. The evolution of the far-field angular power distribution is experimentally measured, and the mode coupling characteristics are studied on a variety of fibers with diverse parameters, including core/cladding diameter (50-400μm/125-480μm), length (few to hundreds of meters), NA (0.15-0.46), etc. The influences of fiber geometry, bending are discussed. This study could provide practical guidance in designing power delivery fibers for high-power diode, solid-state and fiber lasers to preserve the input brightness and beam quality.

Predicting fiber refractive index from a measured preform index profile

When producing fiber lasers and amplifiers, silica glass compositions consisting of three to six different materials are needed. Due to the varying needs of different applications, substantial number of different glass compositions are used in the active fiber structures. Often it is not possible to find material parameters for theoretical models to estimate thermal and mechanical properties of those glass compositions. This makes it challenging to predict accurately fiber core refractive index values, even if the preform index profile is measured. Usually the desired fiber refractive index value is achieved experimentally, which is expensive. To overcome this problem, we analyzed statistically the changes between the measured preform and fiber index values. We searched for correlations that would help to predict the Δn-value change from preform to fiber in a situation where we don’t know the values of the glass material parameters that define the change. Our index change models were built using the data collected from preforms and fibers made by the Direct Nanoparticle Deposition (DND) technology.

On the measurement of fundamental mode bend loss in large-mode-area optical fibers

The measurement of fundamental mode bend loss is thoroughly studied in large-mode-area few-mode optical fibers. The influencing factors, including spectral properties of the light source, modal power content and cladding light, are experimentally investigated. Monte Carlo simulations are performed to help in understanding and illustrating the distribution of the variations. Practical guidelines and an example setup are provided for precise and accurate measurements.

Mode coupling in few-mode large-mode-area fibers

We present an experimental study on mode coupling characteristics of few-mode large-mode-area (LMA) fibers, which are widely used in high power fiber lasers. The modal power allocation is measured by modal decomposition of the nearfield intensity profile of the output beam. Cut-back measurements are carried out with commonly-used fibers with different fiber geometries. The evolution of the modal power content due to mode coupling is presented. The influence of the fiber geometry on mode coupling is discussed.