SBIR-STTR Award

Fiber lasers are rapidly becoming an attractive laser source formany commercial and military applications. All the common rare earth laser materials can be incorporated in a fiber laser. Of particular importance are fiber lasers and amplifiers that use erbium as the active dopant. These devices operate at wavelengths in the neighborhood of 1.55 microns and are commonly used as in-line amplifiers in communications networks. This proposal addresses the scaling of erbium doped fiberamplifiersto achieve output powers in excess of 10 watts. An aerosoldeposition process in conjunction with Modified Chemical Vapor Deposition (MCVD) will be used to fabricate several fiberpreforms. Rectangular double clad fibers will be drawn and coated with a modified solgelbuffer yielding a double cladfiber. The fiber will be excited with a high brightness fibercoupled diode array, and laser parameters will be measured. These data will then be used to prepare a baseline design of the 10watt device to be fabricated in Phase II.