Propagation characteristics of annular laser beams passing through the reflection Bragg grating with deformation

When high-power annular laser beams produced by the unstable resonator pass through the volume Bragg grating (VBG), absorption of light in the VBG will induce a temperature increment, resulting in changes in surface distortion. Considering that the surface distortion of the grating induces index and period differences, the scalar wave equations for the annular laser beams propagating in the VBG have been solved numerically and iteratively using finite-difference and sparse matrix methods. The variation in intensity distributions, the total power reflection coefficient, and the power in the bucket (PIB) for the annular laser beams passing through the reflection VBG with deformation have been analyzed quantitatively. It can be shown that the surface distortion of the VBG and the beam orders of the annular beams affect evidently the intensity distributions, the power reflection coefficient, and the PIB of the output beam. The peak intensity decreases as the deformation of the VBG increases. The total power reflection efficiency decreases significantly with the increase in deformations of the VBG. The PIB of the output beam decreases as the obscuration ratio β and the deformation of the VBG increase. For the given obscuration ratio β, the influence of deformation of reflection VBG on the PIB of the annular beams is more sensitive with increase in distortion of the VBG and decrease in beam order.     

Emission properties of femtosecond (fs) laser fabricated microstructures in Polystyrene (PS)

We fabricated microstructures and micro craters in thin films and bulk of PS. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of the emission from fs laser modified regions of PS when excited at 337, 400, 458, 488 and 514 nm wavelengths with different emission peaks. We systematically studied the emission in context of formation of optical centers and analyzed the spectra of irradiated PS. Change in the excitation wavelength leads to a shift in the emission peak, whereby, we infer that the emission should be due to a myriad of optical centers. Interestingly these optical centers have a similar excitation spectrum. Diphenylbutadiene (DPBD) is probably the main optical center among other optical centers thus formed in the process of fs laser irradiation of PS.     

Full L-band coverage of multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber laser

We propose and experimentally demonstrate a dual-pass unbalanced in-line Sagnac interferometer as a novel comb filter for implements in erbium-doped fiber lasers to obtain wide wavebands of multiwavelength radiations with enhancements of signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). The hybrid combinations of the comb filter with the two schemes of nonlinear polarization rotation and intensity dependent loss have successfully not only enlarged the lasing bandwidth up to 47 nm but also enhanced the SNR up to 40 dB. The simultaneous lasing-wavelengths of 117 channels are also obtained. The multiwavelength lasing spectra with free spectral range of 0.4 nm covering the full L-band are useful for the applications of DWDM and WDM-PON systems.     

Effects of angle of probe laser and pinhole diameter on the time-resolved optical inspection system

A real-time in-situ time-resolved optical inspection system comprising two He-Ne probe lasers, a digital oscilloscope, and three fast photodetectors is developed. The effects of angle of probe laser and pinhole diameter on the time-resolved optical inspection system are investigated during excimer laser crystallization. The longest melt duration and ablation excimer laser fluence are independent of pinhole size. The pinhole with a diameter of 0.3 mm is recommended to use in the time-resolved optical inspection system. Determination of melt duration and observation of explosive crystallization oscillation are independent of angle of probe laser, but four criteria for the relationship between probe lasers and photodetectors should be followed.     

Photonic generation of microwave signals using dual-wavelength single-longitudinal-mode fiber lasers

Photonic generation of microwave signals is demonstrated with a dual-wavelength single-longitudinal-mode erbium-doped fiber ring laser. Microwave signal with a frequency of 21.07 GHz is obtained by aligning the reflection band of a uniform fiber Bragg grating to the two transmission peaks within a fiber Bragg grating-based Fabry-Perot filter. Stable dual-wavelength single-longitudinal-mode operation is guaranteed by means of the combined filtering effect of a saturable absorber and the Fabry-Perot filter. This approach provides an effective solution to the photonic generation of high-frequency microwave signals.     

Simultaneous dual-wavelength laser operation at 1342 and 946 nm in two laser crystals and their sum-frequency mixing

A sum-frequency yellow-green laser at 554.9 nm is reported by this paper, 946 nm wavelength is obtained from ⁴F_3/2-⁴I_9/2 transition in Nd:YAG and 1342 nm wavelength is obtained from ⁴F_3/2-⁴I_13/2 transition in Nd:YVO₄. Using a doubly folded-cavity type-II critical phase matching KTP crystal intra cavity to make 946 nm laser from Nd:YAG and 1342 nm laser from Nd:YVO₄ frequency summed, with incident pumped power of 30 W in Nd:YAG and 20 W in Nd:YVO₄, TEM₀₀ mode yellow-green laser at 554.9 nm at 1.15 W is obtained and its M² factor is less than 1.22. The experimental results show that the Nd:YAG and Nd:YVO₄ crystals intra-cavity sum-frequency mixing is an effective method for yellow-green laser and it can be applied to other two laser crystals to obtain more all-solid-state lasers with different wavelengths.     

Generation of bubbles in glass by a femtosecond laser

Permanent microscale bubbles with varied size and number density are induced in borosilicate glasses by adjusting the focusing depth (FD) of a tightly focused femtosecond laser. With continuously increasing of the focusing depth, the average size of generated bubbles experiences an increase-decrease process. However, the number density of generated bubbles experiences an opposite changing process compared to the change of the size. The possible mechanism for the bubble generation and changing with the focusing depth has been discussed.     

Spectroscopic investigations of femtosecond laser irradiated polystyrene and fabrication of microstructures

We report microfabrication of structures in bulk and thin films of polystyrene (PS) using femtosecond (fs) laser pulses. For the first time to our knowledge, we report emission from the fs laser modified regions of bulk and thin films of PS when excited at 458, 488, and 514 nm. Moreover, we report the existence of peroxide type free radicals, for the first time, in fs laser irradiated bulk PS. We observed the suppression of Raman modes in case of structures fabricated at higher energies and the same effect was noticed in central portion of the structures fabricated. No appreciable broadening was observed in the case of structures fabricated at low energies. Possible applications resulting from such structures are discussed briefly.     

Design and construction of a 110 W green laser for medical application

In this paper, the design and the construction of a high-power side-diode-pumped Nd:YAG solid-state laser at repetition rates of 6 and 10 kHz has been presented. Second harmonic of the Nd:YAG laser with green light at 532 nm, with an average power of 111.5 W at 10 kHz repetition rate, and with 90 ns pulse duration, has been obtained by the nonlinear crystal of KTP with 59% conversion efficiency and 12% diode-to-green optical–optical efficiency in the linear resonator. Beam spot size and divergence is 4 mm and 8 mrad, respectively. The laser stability is about 97%. As a medical application of this laser, investigation of degree of effectiveness and penetration depth of laser on adenomas of resected prostate after open prostatectomy has been done.     

Remote fiber sensor based on cascaded Fourier domain mode-locked laser

We propose a high-speed remote fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor interrogation system based on a 1.3-μm cascaded Fourier-domain mode-locked (FDML) laser. It consists of multiple FBGs connected to an optical circulator in the laser cavity. The cascaded FDML laser with these multiple FBGs is operational when the scanning frequency of the fiber Fabry-Perot tunable filter matches the fundamental frequency of the laser cavity. Each FBG provides a separate laser cavity for the FDML laser. The scanning frequencies of each laser cavity are 30.5314, 31.5393, 32.7108, and 33.8023 kHz. Using the cascaded FDML laser, we measure the performance of the long-distance static strain FBG sensor interrogation system in both the time and spectral domains. The slope coefficients of the measured relative wavelength difference and the relative time delay from the static strain are found to be 0.95 pm/μstrain and 0.15 ns/μstrain, respectively. We also demonstrate the dynamic response of the interrogation system with 80-Hz modulation strain using the cascaded FDML laser. Thus, an FBG sensor interrogation system for high-speed and high-sensitivity long-distance monitoring systems can be realized using a cascaded FDML laser.