Over 270W at 1080nm from an ytterbium doped fibre laser and over 100W at 1565nm from an erbium-ytterbium fibre laser have been achieved
Johan Nilsson of SPI (Southampton Photonics) and the ORC (Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton) presented results at the Photonics West Conference in San Jose this week, which further enhance the rapid advances being made in optical fibre and pump technology.
These results indicate that cladding pumped fibre lasers are producing the high powers required to replace traditional lasers in important application areas.
In published experiments, over 270W of single-mode output power at 1080nm from an ytterbium doped fibre laser (YDFL) and over 100W of single-mode output power at 1565nm from an erbium-ytterbium fibre laser have been achieved.
SPI believes these are the highest powers ever produced using ytterbium and erbium-ytterbium single-mode fiber lasers.
Ytterbium-doped fibre lasers are among the most efficient of all rare-earth doped fibre lasers, and erbium-ytterbium co-doped fibre lasers are the most efficient type of high-power laser of any kind operating in the 'eye-safe' wavelength region at around 1550nm.
With the appropriate fibre designs, SPI expects single-mode fibre lasers with 1kW of output power to be realisable in the not too distant future.
It is also anticipated that the recent rapid improvements will continue and will spread to more refined fibre lasers with single-polarisation, narrow-linewidths, and pulsed sources. Stuart Woods, SPI's director of business development, commented: "This development is typical of the ground-breaking work underway at SPI to bring disruptive, high-power fibre technology to market offering both lower unit and total ownership cost for customers in a variety of applications".
World record-beating results from a 980nm laser using SPI patented ytterbium ring-doped cladding pumping technology, are also being presented at the ASSP (Advanced Solid State Photonics) Conference in San Antonio, Texas in early February.
