Product Code: ICAL08_M804

High Average Power Ultrafast Fiber Amplifiers
Authors:
Yoann Zaouter, Amplitude Systemes; Pessac France
Eric Cormier, University Bordeaux; Talence France
Eric Mottay, Amplitude Systemes; Pessac France
Presented at ICALEO 2008

The recent availability of high reliability Ytterbium ultrafast lasers has led to the rapid development of industrial applications of ultrafast lasers. Because of the moderate average power currently available, these industrial applications tend to be limited to high added value, low productivity processes. A significant increase of the average power of current ultrafast lasers is required to take advantage of the full potential of micro-machining applications. Fiber lasers have demonstrated their capability for extremely high average power operation. However, power scaling of ultrafast fiber lasers has been so far restricted by the non-linearities induced phase distorsions. Confinement of laser light in the fiber core gives rise to an extremely high optical intensity, and non linear effects degrade the temporal pulse quality. Traditional approaches, such as Chirped Pulse Amplification, try to eliminate these non linear effects. In a different approach, these effets can be used to improve laser performance. We present high peak power, high average power fiber amplifiers, using chirped pulse amplification, advanced fiber design, spectral compression, or non linear optimisation. Average power range from 10 to 100W, pulse energy up to several hundreds of microJoules, and pulse duration in the picosecond or femtosecond regime, as low as 60 fs.