Optical fiber amplifiers and lasers are gaining widespread interest for high-power applications due to their numerous advantages over traditional solid-state and gas lasers including extremely high damage thresholds, excellent beam quality, superior wavelength and temperature stability, small size, and very high powers using novel double-cladding fiber (DCF) geometry's. DCF devices are a unique solution for obtaining diffraction-limited high-power laser beams due to the ability to inject multiwatt pump powers into their large-area and large-numerical aperature primary cladding. To date, however, polarization-maintaining DCF amplifiers have not been widely commercialized and may be critical to the future success of coherence-based power combiners for kilowatt-class lasers and future optical fiber lidar instrumentation. During Phase I, Lambda Instruments investigated the feasibility of fabricating Yb-doped polarization-maintaining (PM) DCF as well as using conventional Yb-doped double-cladding fibers combined with novel fiber grating polarizers to obtain polarized, high-power light. During Phase II Lambda proposes to finalize the development of polarization-maintaining double-cladding fiber and demonstrate prototype amplifiers within a phase-locked laser array.
Benefits: Lambda will target defense-related applications for polarization-maintaining amplifiers for kilowatt class laser applications. In addition to military applications, Lambda will target other commercial applications in fields such as telecommunications, cable television, satellite communications, printing, medical, data storage, consumer electronics, sensor, and materials processing.
Keywords: Fiber Amplifiers, Gratings, Double-Cladding Fibers, High-Power Lasers, Pump Combiners, Phase-Locked Lasers, Coherent Beam Combination, Lidar
