An Interdisciplinary Method of Teaching Ecology in High School Science and Mathematics Classes.

Not Available This proposal describes an innovative, ultrashort pulse laser system offering environmental stability, compactness and extremely high efficiency. This will be achieved by the use of a novel diode-pumped, mode-locked ytterbium fiber laser and fiber pulse stretcher, followed by a diode-pumped Yb:YAG amplifier and compact grating compressor. This system will deliver the >5mJ, subpicosecond pulses needed by the DoD, at the multi-kilohertz repetition rates required for commerical laser machining applications. While fiber-based CPA systems have been reported previously, effort has mainly centered on operation at 1550nm using erbium-doped fibers and output energies in these systems have been limited to microjoules. Amplification to higher energies in these systems is prevented by the incompatibility of the erbium emission wavelength with bulk diode-pumped materials operating at ~1um, such as Nd:Glass or Yb:YAG.