We report on the first coherent beam combining of 60 fiber chirped-pulse amplifiers in a tiled-aperture configuration along with an interferometric phase measurement technique. Relying on coherent beams recombination in the far field, this technique appears well suited for the combination of a large number of fiber amplifiers. The 60 output beams are stacked in a hexagonal arrangement and collimated through a high fill factor hexagonal microlens array. The measured residual errors within the fiber array yields standard deviations of 4.2 μm for the fiber pitch and 3.1 mrad for the beam-to-beam pointing, allowing a combining efficiency of 50 %. The phasing of 60 fiber amplifiers demonstrates both pulse synchronization and phase stabilization with a residual phase error as low as λ/100 RMS.
Quantum technologies have been identified as breakthrough technologies with a potential high impact on future navigation, sensing and communication systems since the end of the 90’s. In this paper we will review how these technologies can contribute to electromagnetic spectrum dominance through the use of SHB (spectral hole burning) based spectral holography and of NV (nitrogen vacancy) centers in diamond. Quantum technologies, combined with integration techniques, will also improve the performances of navigation systems thanks to ultra-precise compacts atomic clocks, accelerometers and gyros.
Through the European Defence Agency, the Joint Investment Programme on CBRN protection funded the project AMURFOCAL to address detection at stand-off distances with amplified quantum cascade laser technology in the longwave infrared spectral range, where chemical agents have specific absorptions features.
An instrument was developed based on infrared backscattering spectroscopy. We realized a pulsed laser system with a fast tunability from 8 to 10 μm using an external-cavity quantum cascade laser (EC-QCL) and optical parametric amplification (OPA). The EC-QCL is tunable from 8 to 10 μm and delivers output peak powers up to 500 mW. The peak power is amplified with high gain in an orientation-patterned gallium arsenide (OP-GaAs) nonlinear crystal. We developed a pulsed fiber laser acousto-optically tunable from 1880 to 1980 nm with output peak powers up to 7 kW as pump source to realize an efficient quasi-phase matched OPA without any mechanical or thermal action onto the nonlinear crystal. Mixing the EC-QCL and the pump beams within the OP-GaAs crystal and tuning the pump wavelength enables parametric amplification of the EC-QCL from 8 to 10 μm leading to up to 120 W peak power. The output is transmitted to a target at a distance of 10 – 20 m. A receiver based on a broadband infrared detector comprises a few detector elements. A 3D data cube is registered by wavelength tuning the laser emission while recording a synchronized signal received from the target. The presentation will describe the AMURFOCAL instrument, its functional units and its principles of operation.
Within the framework of the first European Defence Agency (EDA) call for protection against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats (CBRN Protection) we established a project on active multispectral reflection fingerprinting of persistent chemical agents (AMURFOCAL). A first paper on the project AMURFOCAL has been issued last year on the SPIE conference in Warsaw, Poland. This follow up paper will be accompanied by an additional paper that deals specifically with the aspect of the 100 W-level peak power laser system tunable in the LWIR. In order to close a capability gap and to achieve detection at stand-off distances our consortium built a high peak power pulsed laser system with fast tunability from 8 to 10 μm using an external-cavity quantum cascade laser and optical parametric amplification. This system had to be tested against different substances on various surfaces with different angles of inclination to evaluate the ability for an active stand-off technology with an eye-safe laser system to detect small amounts of hazardous substances and residues. The scattered light from the background surface interferes with the signal originating from the persistent chemicals. To account for this additional difficulty new software based on neutral networks was developed for evaluation. The paper describes the basic setup of the instrument and the experiments as well as some first results for this technology.
The XCAN project aims at the coherent combination of 61 fiber amplifiers in the femtosecond regime. An important intermediate step towards this goal is the implementation of a seven fiber test setup, which allows to address key scientific and technical challenges which might occur in the scaled version of 61 fibers. This work includes the design and characterization of a support unit able to hold 61 fibers with the high precision required for an efficient coherent combination in tiled aperture configuration. This configuration, in combination with an interferometric phase measurement and active phase control, is particularly well suited for the coherent combination of a very large number of beams. Our first preliminary results with seven fibers include a combination efficiency of 30 % and a residual phase error between two fibers as low as λ/40 rms. Experiments conducted with three fibers in order to evaluate technical improvements revealed an increase of efficiency to 54 %. The combined beam was temporally compressed to 225 fs, which is Fourier transform limited with respect to the measured spectrum.
Remote detection of toxic chemicals of very low vapour pressure deposited on surfaces in form of liquid films, droplets or powder is a capability that is needed to protect operators and equipment in chemical warfare scenarios and in industrial environments. Infrared spectroscopy is a suitable means to support this requirement. Available instruments based on passive emission spectroscopy have difficulties in discriminating the infrared emission spectrum of the surface background from that of the contamination. Separation of background and contamination is eased by illuminating the surface with a spectrally tune-able light source and by analyzing the reflectivity spectrum.
The project AMURFOCAL (Active Multispectral Reflection Fingerprinting of Persistent Chemical Agents) has the research topic of stand-off detection and identification of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) with amplified quantum cascade laser technology in the long-wave infrared spectral range. The project was conducted under the Joint Investment Programme (JIP) on CBRN protection funded through the European Defence Agency (EDA).
The AMURFOCAL instrument comprises a spectrally narrow tune-able light source with a broadband infrared detector and chemometric data analysis software. The light source combines an external cavity quantum cascade laser (EC-QCL) with an optical parametric amplifier (OPA) to boost the peak output power of a short laser pulse tune-able over the infrared fingerprint region. The laser beam is focused onto a target at a distance between 10 and 20 m. A 3D data cube is registered by tuning the wavelength of the laser emission while recording the received signal scattered off the target using a multi-element infrared detector. A particular chemical is identified through the extraction of its characteristic spectral fingerprint out of the measured data.
The paper describes the AMURFOCAL instrument, its functional units, and its principles of operation.
The XCAN project, which is a three years project and began in 2015, carried out by Thales and the Ecole Polytechnique aims at developing a laser system based on the coherent combination of laser beams produced through a network of amplifying optical fibers. This technique provides an attractive mean of reaching simultaneously the high peak and high average powers required for various industrial, scientific and defense applications. The architecture has to be compatible with very large number of fibers (1000-10000). The goal of XCAN is to overcome all the key scientific and technological barriers to the design and development of an experimental laser demonstrator. The coherent addition of multiple individual phased beams is aimed to provide tens of Gigawatt peak power at 50 kHz repetition rate.
Coherent beam combining (CBC) of fiber amplifiers involves a master oscillator which is split into N fiber channels and then amplified through series of polarization maintaining fiber pre-amplifiers and amplifiers. In the so-called tiled aperture configuration, the N fibers are arranged in an array and collimated in the near field of the laser output. The N beamlets then interfere constructively in the far field, and give a bright central lobe. CBC techniques with active phase locking involve phase mismatch detection, calculation of the correction and phase compensation of each amplifier by means of phase modulators. Interferometric phase measurement has proven to be particularly well suited to phase-lock a very large number of fibers in continuous regime. A small fraction of the N beamlets is imaged onto a camera. The beamlets interfere separately with a reference beam. The phase mismatch of each beam is then calculated from the interferences’ position. In this presentation, we demonstrate the phase locking of 19 fibers in femtosecond pulse regime with this technique.
In our first experiment, a master oscillator generates pulses of 300 fs (chirped at 200 ps). The beam is split into 19 passive channels. Prior to phase locking, the optical path differences are adjusted down to 10 μm with optical delay lines. Interferograms of the 19 fibers are recorded at 1 kHz with a camera. A dedicated algorithm is developed to measure both the phase and the delay between the fibers on a measurement path. The delay and phase shift are thus calculated collectively from a single image and piezo-electric fiber stretchers are controlled in order to ensure compensation of time-varying phase and delay variations. The residual phase shift error is below λ/60 rms. The coherent beam combining is obtained after propagation and compression. The combined pulse width is measured at 315fs. A second experiment was done to coherently combine two amplified channels of the XCAN demonstrator. A residual phase shift error of λ/30 rms was measured in this case.
Due to its remarkable properties, graphene-based devices are particularly promising for optoelectronic applications. Thanks to its compatibility with standard silicon technology, graphene could compete III-V compounds for the development of low cost and high-frequency optoelectronic devices. We present a new optoelectronic device that consists in a coplanar waveguide integrating a commercially-available CVD graphene active channel. With this structure, we demonstrate high-frequency (30 GHz) broadband optoelectronic mixing in graphene, by measuring the response of the device to an optical intensity-modulated excitation and an electrical excitation at the same time. These features are particularly promising for RADAR and LIDAR applications, as well as for low-cost high-speed communication systems.
Coherent beam combining of fiber amplifiers provides an attractive mean of reaching high power laser. In an interferometric phase measurement the beams issued for each fiber combined are imaged onto a sensor and interfere with a reference plane wave. This registration of interference patterns on a camera allows the measurement of the exact phase error of each fiber beam in a single shot. Therefore, this method is a promising candidate toward very large number of combined fibers. Based on this technique, several architectures can be proposed to coherently combine a high number of fibers. The first one based on digital holography transfers directly the image of the camera to spatial light modulator (SLM). The generated hologram is used to compensate the phase errors induced by the amplifiers. This architecture has therefore a collective phase measurement and correction. Unlike previous digital holography technique, the probe beams measuring the phase errors between the fibers are co-propagating with the phase-locked signal beams. This architecture is compatible with the use of multi-stage isolated amplifying fibers. In that case, only 20 pixels per fiber on the SLM are needed to obtain a residual phase shift error below λ/10rms. The second proposed architecture calculates the correction applied to each fiber channel by tracking the relative position of the interference finges. In this case, a phase modulator is placed on each channel. In that configuration, only 8 pixels per fiber on the camera is required for a stable close loop operation with a residual phase error of λ/20rms, which demonstrates the scalability of this concept.
An external cavity with a binary phase grating has been developed to achieve the coherent beam addition of five
quantum-cascade lasers emitting at 4.65 μm. The combining of these five emitters is achieved by a binary phase grating
or Dammann grating able to separate an incident beam into five beams of equal intensities with a 75% efficiency. A CW
output power of ~ 0.65 W corresponding to a combining efficiency of 70% with a good beam quality is obtained. More
results concerning output power, combining, efficiency stability and beam quality and spectrum are exposed.
An external cavity with a binary phase grating has been developed to achieve the coherent beam addition of five
quantum-cascade lasers emitting at 4.65 μm. The combining of these five emitters is achieved by a binary phase grating
or Dammann grating able to separate an incident beam into five beams of equal intensities with a 75% efficiency. A CW
output power of ~ 0.5 W corresponding to a combining efficiency of 66% with a good beam quality is obtained. More
results concerning output power, combining, efficiency stability and beam quality and spectrum are exposed.
We propose a versatile set-up dedicated to programmable beam shaping of femtosecond pulses in a focal plane. A non-pixelated liquid-crystal light valve is used as the phase-front modulator. We demonstrate active and adaptive wavefront correction of a 4-μJ, 100-kHz amplified laser chain, where residual wavefront distorsions are decreased down to λ/15 peak-valley and λ/100 rms. The subsequent improvement for micromachining applications is investigated, and diffraction-limited holes are demonstrated on various materials. Moreover, beam patterning in the focal plane is also presented. Theoretical calculations of the required phase modulation are proposed, and experimental shapes are demonstrated, like square and circular top-hats, as well as triangle or doughnut shapes.
We have developed Al-free tapered laser structures for both high brightness and reliability. The Al-free active region consists of a separate confinement heterostructure (SCH) with a GaInAsP large optical cavity (LOC) to provide low optical losses and a strained GaInAs quantum well for high gain. Broad-area lasers diodes (100 μm width) were fabricated with low internal losses (< 2.3 cm-1), high internal efficiency (98%) and a low transparency current density (100 A/cm2). In order to control the spatial beam quality along the slow axis, we fabricated low aperture tapered laser structures. On a single tapered laser, we have obtained an output power of 1 W at 1.5 A together with a wall-plug efficiency of 44%. Furthermore, we have fabricated high brightness mini-bars of index guided tapered lasers at 980 nm (emissive area 2.7 mm) emitting a power of 25 W CW at 15°C and 50 W QCW at 25°C with low slow axis angles. Thanks to high power and low far-field width (FWHM=3.5° at 20 W), we demonstrate 11 W of output power coupled into a 100 μm diameter optical fiber from a single mini-bar, by means of a collective beam shaping technique.
We demonstrate a high-spectral-purity continuous-wave terahertz source, using a diode pumped Yb3+:KGd(WO4)2 dual frequency laser. THz radiation is generated by photomixing the two frequencies in a low temperature grown In:25Ga:75As photoconductor loading a dipole antenna. The frequency difference between the two optical modes is tuneable by step from d.c. to 3.1 THz. A maximum optical output power of 120 mW CW has been obtained with a beatnote-linewidth narrower than 30 kHz. Preliminary measurements show a tunable THz emission with a maximum output power in the order of a few tens of nW.
Laser diodes at 980 nm have important applications in medicine (surgery, dentistry) and Telecoms for WDM, high bit rate networks (Er or Er/Yb doped fibre amplifiers). These applications need a high coupling efficiency of the source into a fibre. High brightness mini-bars with an emissive length of 2.7 mm have been recently developed. These devices consist of an array of aluminium free active region index guided tapered laser diodes with standard AR/HR coatings. We have improved the performances as a result of a new epitaxial layer and a new mini-bar design. We measure an optical output power of 25W at 40A under CW operation at 15°C. At 25°C and 33A, we obtain 20W CW and the far field along the slow axis has a Gaussian shape, with a low FWHM value of 3.5°. Along the fast axis, the far-field also has a Gaussian shape and a FWHM of 31,5°. To couple this tapered diode laser mini-bar into a 100μm diameter fibre (0.26 numerical aperture), we use a patented collective beam shaping technique for optical coupling. We obtain a coupled power of 11.2W under CW operation at 971 nm, 21°C with an emitted power from the mini-bar of 21.7W, resulting in a coupling efficiency of 52%. The conductively cooled mini-bar, all the optics and the optical fibre connector are assembled into a 82x62x23mm package. To our knowledge this is the highest reported power coupled into 100μm optical fibre from a single laser diode chip using a collective coupling scheme without any array of micro-optics.
We propose an active and adaptative optics device dedicated to programmable femtosecond beam shaping, based on the use of an optically addressed light valve. A theoretical investigation of the system is presented. The experimental set-up incorporating an active beam shaping device, is depicted. Results are then described and discussed.
A high-brightness component is used to longitudinally pump Nd:YAG and Nd:YVO4 crystals. The light is focused by a simple, compact and efficient nonimaging concentrator. A 50% at 1.064 micrometer and a 25% at 0.532 micrometer optical-optical efficiencies were demonstrated with a near TEM00 beam.
KEYWORDS: Solar concentrators, Semiconductor lasers, Crystals, Neodymium lasers, Diffraction, Lens design, Mirrors, High power lasers, Diodes, Network on a chip
A new simple, compact, and efficient optical device is presented which allows any commercially available laser diode arrays or stacks to longitudinally pump laser materials. A Nd:YVO4 laser was built and an optical-optical efficiency as high as 50% was demonstrated with a diffraction limited output beam.
The CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, French space agency) established the laser system characteristics for Mars-Earth spatial communications using the Pulse Position Modulation technique. Today, diode-pumped solid-state lasers are under intense research and development. Indeed, in comparison with flash-lamp pumped laser, they offer significant advantages in terms of efficiency, compactness, lifetime and high beam quality. We have demonstrated that gain-switch operation is preferable to Q-switching technique to control and to obtain a good pulse width and amplitude reproducibility. The pulse width requirement and the laser-diode pumping scheme lead to a preferred configuration based on a microchip laser oscillator coupled to an amplifier. Best results were performed with a Nd:YVO4 microchip longitudinally-pumped by fiber-coupled laser-diode bar. Diffraction limited beam, 15 ns pulse width and 100 kHz repetition rate were achieved. The output beam was actually also single frequency and linearly polarized. A transversally-diode-pumped 7-pass amplifier is also demonstrated.
The CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales) established the laser system characteristics for Mars-Earth spatial communications using the Pulse Position Modulation (PPM) technique. Today, diode-pumped solid-state lasers are under intense research and development. Indeed, in comparison with flash-lamp pumped laser, they offer significant advantages in terms of efficiency, compactness, lifetime and high beam quality. We have demonstrated that gain- switch operation is preferable to Q-switching technique to control and to obtain a good pulse width and amplitude reproducibility. The pulse width requirement and the laser-diode pumping scheme lead to a preferred configuration based on a microchip laser oscillator coupled to an amplifier. Experiments were performed with several microchips of Nd:YAG and Nd:YVO4 crystals pumped by fiber-coupled laser-diode. The design of the transversally-pumped amplifier is based on a modified multipass 1:1 confocally reimaging longitudinally-pumped amplifier proposed by Plaessmann et al.
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