High Energy Laser Component Technology for Eye-Safer Fiber Lasers

The objective of this proposal is to demonstrate the feasibility of a direct laser diode array side pumped large mode area high power eye-safer fiber laser. Traditional laser diode end pumped single mode fiber laser designs are limited in terms laser power pumping and extraction. Double clad large mode area fibers are scaleable to high output power levels. They typically utilize fiber delivered laser diode array pumping at various laser gain length intervals in order to overcome fiber aperture power density limitations. Even with such improvements, current high power fiber lasers still exhibit numerous trade-offs in laser beam quality, system size and diode pump fiber delivery complexity and cost. Direct side pump high power fiber laser designs circumvent these complex and expensive system integration issues with simpler, smaller and more straightforward scaleable designs. High power low heat fraction fluorophosphate fiber laser architectures may eliminate pump beam combining, free space pump beam launch optics and multiple fiber coupling. Kigre proposes to integrate unique athermal fiber laser core gain materials and pumping architectures into compact high power eye-safer fiber laser devices operating in the 1.5 micron region