ORC Seminar Series

Pre Viva Talks

Speaker: Fei He

Date: Monday 6 April 2009

Time: 2pm

Venue: Building 46 / 2003 (L/T B)

Abstract:

With its broad gain bandwidth and high optical conversion efficiency, ytterbium (Yb)-doped silica fiber represents an attractive medium for the generation and amplification of ultrashort optical pulses. Research interest in Yb-doped fiber chirped pulse amplifier (CPA) systems first appeared in the 1990s. However, the potential advantages and capabilities of Yb-doped fiber CPA systems were not fully studied during the early research.

This talk presents the recent research of high power, ultra-short pulse, diode pumped, Yb-doped fiber based laser systems at the ORC. Novel aspects of the systems include the use of dielectric gratings as the pulse stretcher and compressor, and the application of compact chirped-fiber-Bragg-grating (CFBG) pulse stretchers. This research also presents the development of a numerical model that can predict the performance of high power Yb-doped fiber amplifier systems. Experimental results of an Yb-doped fiber CPA system that was optimized for either high average power or high pulse energies will be presented, and the development of a novel fiber CPA system operating with strong self-phase-modulation (SPM) will be described.