Vincent Roy

Material micromachining using a pulsed fiber laser platform with fine temporal nanosecond pulse shaping capability

We report on recent advances in laser material processing using a novel pulsed fiber laser platform providing pulse shape agility at the nanosecond time scale and at high repetition rates. The pulse shapes can be programmed with a time resolution of 2.5 ns and with an amplitude resolution of 10 bits. Depending on the desired laser performances, the pulses are generated either by directly modulating the drive current of a seed laser diode or by modulating the output of a seed laser diode operated in CW with electro-optic modulators. The pulses are amplified in an amplifier chain in a MOPA configuration. Advanced polarization maintaining LMA fiber designs enable output energy per pulse up to 60 μJ at 1064 nm at a repetition rate of 200 kHz with excellent beam quality (M2< 1.1) and narrow line widths suitable for efficient frequency conversion. Micro-milling experiments were carried out with stainless steel, in which processing microstructures of a few tens of microns in size usually represents a challenge, and aluminum, whose thermal conductivity is about 20 times higher than stainless steel. The results obtained with two metals having very different thermal properties using different pulse shapes with durations varying between 3 ns and 80 ns demonstrate the benefits of using lasers offering flexible pulse durations and controllable pulse intensity profiles for rapidly optimizing a process in different applications while using the same laser with respect to conventional methods based on pulsed laser with fixed pulse shapes. Numerous applications are envisioned in a near future, like the micromachining of multi-layered structures, in particular when working with the harmonics of the laser.

Micro-milling process improvement using an agile pulse-shaping fiber laser

We demonstrate the usefulness of INOs pulse-shaping fiber laser platform to rapidly develop complex laser micromachining processes. The versatility of such laser sources allows for straightforward control of the emitting energy envelop on the nanosecond timescale to create multi-amplitude level pulses and/or multi-pulse regimes. The pulses are amplified in an amplifier chain in a MOPA configuration that delivers output energy per pulse up to 60 μJ at 1064 nm at a repetition rate of 200 kHz with excellent beam quality (M2 < 1.1) and narrow line widths suitable for efficient frequency conversion. Also, their pulse-on-demand and pulse-to-pulse shape selection capability at high repetition rates makes those agile laser sources suitable for the implementation of high-throughput complex laser processing. Micro-milling experiments were carried out on two metals, aluminum and stainless steel, having very different thermal properties. For aluminum, our results show that the material removal efficiency depends strongly on the pulse shape, especially near the ablation threshold, and can be maximized to develop efficient laser micro-milling processes. But, the material removal efficiency is not always correlated with a good surface quality. However, the roughness of the milled surface can be improved by removing a few layers of material using another type of pulse shape. The agility of INOs fiber laser enables the implementation of a fast laser process including two steps employing different pulse characteristics for maximizing the material removal rate and obtaining a good surface quality at the same time. A comparison of material removal efficiency with stainless steel, well known to be difficult to mill on the micron scale, is also presented.

Generating polarization-entangled photon pairs using cross-spliced birefringent fibers

We demonstrate a novel polarization-entangled photon-pair source based on standard birefringent polarization-maintaining optical fiber. The source consists of two stretches of fiber spliced together with perpendicular polarization axes, and has the potential to be fully fiber-based, with all bulk optics replaced with in-fiber equivalents. By modelling the temporal walk-off in the fibers, we implement compensation necessary for the photon creation processes in the two stretches of fiber to be indistinguishable. Our source subsequently produces a high quality entangled state having (92.2 ± 0.2) % fidelity with a maximally entangled Bell state.

All-fiber, high power, rugged ultrashort-pulse laser source at 1550 nm

We present here the architecture of an all-fiber, high-power FCPA source emitting at 1550 nm. This system generates sub-300 fs pulses at a repetition rate of 22 MHz and with an average output power of 1.5 W after pulse compression. The power amplifier consists of a polarization-maintaining Er:Yb doped LMA fiber which results in a beam quality factor M2 < 1.2. The seed laser pulses are stretched to 240 ps using dispersion-shifted fiber before being amplified and compressed using a bulk compressor based on a diffraction grating pair. The output power of the source is not limited by the onset of detrimental nonlinear effects such as self-phase modulation or stimulated Raman scattering since the accumulated nonlinear phase-shift in the power amplifier is well below π rad. Maximum output power is rather limited by the available pump power; a likely five-fold increase, given actual state-of-the-art technology, would thus yield a laser source that may serve as a substitute for widespread solid-state lasers in various fields such as laser machining, biophotonics and nonlinear optics.

Yb-doped large mode area fibers with depressed clad and dopant confinement

Large mode area fibers with depressed-index cladding layer and confinement of rare-earth dopants can provide effective suppression of high-order modes. A polarization-maintaining Yb-doped double-clad fiber with 35/250 μm core/clad diameter has been fabricated from conventional methods according to this design. The fiber which has an effective mode area close to 500 μm2 yields near diffraction-limited output with beam quality factor M2 close to 1.1 when tested as a power amplifier with a coherent seed light source. Beam pointing measurements provide further evidence for near single-mode behavior as the pointing fluctuations are shown to be negligible once the fiber is coiled to a given diameter.

Arbitrarily-shaped bursts of picosecond pulses from a fiber laser source for high-throughput applications

Increasing the ablation efficiency of picosecond laser sources can be performed by bunching pulses in bursts1 and benefit from heat accumulation effects2-5 in the target. Pulsed fiber lasers are well suited for such a regime of operation, as the single pulse energy in a fiber is limited by the onset of nonlinear effects (SPM, SRS). Increasing the number of pulses to form a burst of pulses allows for average power scaling of picosecond fiber lasers. We are presenting in this paper a high-power fiber laser emitting arbitrarily-shaped bursts of picosecond pulses at 20 W of average output power. Burst duration can be varied from 2.5 ns to 80 ns. The burst repetition rate is externally triggered and can be varied from 100 kHz to 1 MHz. The single pulse duration is 60 ps and the repetition rate within a burst is 1.8 GHz. The output beam is linearly polarized (PER > 20 dB) and its M2 value is smaller than 1.15. The laser source has a tunable central wavelength around 1064 nm and a spectral linewidth compatible with frequency conversion. Conversion efficiency higher than 60% has been obtained at 10 W of 1064-nm output power.

Nonlinear compression for generation of high energy ultrashort pulses using an Yb-doped large mode area tapered fiber

Nonlinear compression for generation of high energy ultrashort pulses using an Yb-doped large mode area tapered fiber is reported. Single-stage amplifier gain larger than 43 dB is achieved, with energy of seed pulses (35 ps, 200 kHz) boosted up to 50 μJ at the amplifier output. Spectral broadening induced by self-phase modulation is shown to take place advantageously along the larger end of the counter-pumped active tapered fiber, where the mode area scales beyond 1000 μm2. Pulse durations as short as 1 ps and peak powers exceeding 16 MW are demonstrated thereafter using a chirped volume Bragg grating as a dispersive compressor. Efficient suppression of higher-order modes in the large mode area tapered fiber yields diffraction-limited output (M2 < 1.2) for optimal pulse compression.

10W, high repetition rate, 775 nm fiber laser with high resolution pulse shaping, and on-demand pulse to pulse switching capability, for bioinstrumentation

Advances in the research fields of biological, biophysical and biochemistry rely on the development of novel, flexible, powerful and reliable laser sources in the visible — NIR part of the spectrum [1, 2]. Optical excitation in the 750–800 nm region, with flexible pulsed formats, can be advantageous in applications such as confocal fluorescence microscopy, STED, FLIM microscopy, photoluminescence spectroscopy, laser photocoagulation and time-resolved spectroscopy. Finely tailored pulse formatting can indeed provide significant enhancement in many of those techniques [3] by optimizing the temporal distribution of the optical excitation with respect to the specific characteristics of the fluorophore of interest such as its excited-state lifetime for example.

Yb-doped large mode area tapered fiber with depressed cladding and dopant confinement

A polarization-maintaining Yb-doped large mode area fiber with depressed-index inner cladding layer and confinement of rare-earth dopants has been drawn as a long tapered fiber. The larger end features a core/clad diameter of 56/400 μm and core NA ~ 0.07, thus leading to an effective mode area over 1000 μm2. The fiber was tested up to 100 W average power, with near diffraction-limited output as the beam quality M2 was measured < 1.2. As effective single-mode guidance is enforced in the first section due to enhanced bending loss, subsequent adiabatic transition of the mode field in the taper section preserves single-mode amplification towards the larger end of the fiber.

A collinear nondegenerate source of entangled photon pairs in PM fiber

We demonstrate a source of entangled photon pairs based on standard polarization-maintaining fiber in a novel architecture. Sections of fibre are spliced together with perpendicular polarization axes, allowing single-path entanglement generation.