Development of innovative fiber lasers for biomedical, industrial and defense & security applications

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Fiber lasers, along with laser diodes, have greatly contributed to the development of a new generation of laser sources as well as their applications in virtually every sector of human activity. In the manufacturing sector, quasi diffraction-limited ytterbium fiber laser sources with output power of the order of tens of kW at a wavelength of 1 µm have revolutionized cutting and welding of metals. Erbium-doped silica fiber-based lasers and amplifiers operating at 1.5 µm have also played a key role in the development of all-optical telecommunication networks. In fact, fibre lasers have completely revolutionized industrial lasers to such an extent that several experts are now forecasting that they will totally wipe out solid-state lasers within the next decade. In the manufacturing sector, fibre lasers, first introduced massively by German and Japanese companies, have already taken over operations such as welding, fine drilling and cutting of metals. Compared to the solid-state lasers that they have replaced, they are rugged, compact and highly reliable. Now, these superior features are directly derived from the physical properties of Fibre Bragg gratings (FBGs). In fact, the use of FBGs as integrated cavity couplers in Monolithic (i.e. all-fibre) fibre lasers eliminates all mechanical instability, thus tremendously improves its ruggedness and considerably reduces the device overall dimension. In fact, FBGs is truly the key component allowing for the development of commercial fibre lasers. This proposal therefore aims at supporting a targeted collaborative research effort with our industrial partners, aiming at the development of an optimal manufacturing process for the development of monolithic fibre lasers, namely high power fiber lasers at the wavelength 1 µm as well as Mid-Infrared fiber lasers operating between 2µm and 4 µm.