There is high demand for low-nonlinearity rare-earth-doped fibers that can be used to develop kW-class high-energy narrow-linewidth lasers for many DOD applications. NP Photonics proposes to design and fabricate specialty optical fibers with significantly reduced nonlinearity compared to current commercial fibers. In this Phase I program, we will design and fabricate the specialty optical fibers and investigate their nonlinearity mitigation and output power scalability. Nonlinearity mitigated gain fibers meeting or exceeding the requirements of the Navys applications will be fabricated and characterized in Phase II and delivered to DoDs laboratories for testing by the end of Phase II.
Benefit: The proposed gain fibers can be used in DOD high energy laser systems. They can also be used for industrial manufacturing, material processing, ultrafast laser amplification, and specialty fiber lasers.
Keywords: Raman Scattering, Raman Scattering, nonlinear effect suppression, Rare-earth-doped fibers, stimulated Brillouin scattering, low-nonlinearity optical fiber, kW-class fiber lasers, Modulation Instability
