All Fiber-based automatic pulse shaper for efficient energy scaling of ultrashort 2 micron fiber laser pulses

NP Photonics proposes to develop an all fiber-based automatic pulse shaper with an adaptive control loop by integrating 2 micron MUX/DEMUX and phase modulator array based on commercial fiber-pigtailed components at 2 micron (phase modulator, circulator, and FBG). This project will be leveraged upon NP"s mode-locked fiber lasers at 2 micron, proprietary high Tm-doped germanate fibers with large core and high unit gain, short cascade fiber amplifier technique, and feedback loop control and algorithms. The proposed new pulse shaper features compact, stable, wide transmission window and high spectral resolution, which can efficiently and accurately pre-compensate the large amount of nonlinear phase (or B-integral) in the chirped pulse amplifier (CPA) system, resulting an all fiber-based, compact, environmentally stable USP source at eye-safe wavelength of 2 micron with mJ-level pulse energy for applications of interest to the US Navy, such as directed energy weapons, ECM, and LADAR. Based on the demonstration of the feasibility for the proposed pulse shaper in Phase I period, we will implement a 20-channel single-chip integrated pulse shaper in Phase II.