Mode-Filtered Fiber Amplifier

Using coiled fibers to dramatically increase the power of fiber lasers has led to the fabrication of high-power, high-beam-quality lasers that are compact, rugged, and extremely efficient.

Prior to this breakthrough, conventional wisdom assumed that fiber lasers were restricted to low output powers and pulse energies. Specifically, a small, single-mode fiber core (typically less than 10 µm in diameter) could not generate or transmit high optical powers without being damaged or inciting parasitic nonlinear processes. Increasing the core size increased laser power at the expense of beam quality, an unacceptable tradeoff for most applications.

Run time 3.41 mins