![]() ![]() ![]() The company started with a one-watt single-mode fiber laser in 1995 by 2004, it had reached single-mode continuous output of one kilowatt. The mid-1990s boom in fiber optic communications diverted most companies’ attention from lasers to development of fiber amplifiers, but IPG Photonics, founded in Moscow in 1990 by OSA Fellow Valentin Gapontsev, made major progress in ytterbium-doped fiber lasers. Power on the rise: Growth in power of IPG Photonics fiber-laser offerings in the past quarter-century. Development on that foundation continued, with changes in fiber geometry, doping and diode combinations contributing to increases in brightness, power and energy efficiency (see infographic at right). Thus the boundary between the core and the inner cladding confined the laser light generated in the neodymium-doped core, while the boundary between the inner and outer cladding confined the diode pump light in the inner cladding. This inner cladding had a refractive index lower than the core but higher than the outer cladding. Snitzer added an extra glass layer between the traditional high-index fiber core and low-index cladding. Diode pumping had emerged for solid-state lasers in the 1980s, but for fiber lasers this initially had required coupling the pump light into the small central core. Snitzer re-opened the door to high-power fiber lasers in 1988, when he developed a new fiber structure to better couple pump light into the fiber. The Airborne Laser program, which lasted from the mid-1990s to 2012, was the last of that line.Įlias Snitzer opened the door to high-power fiber lasers in 1988, when he developed a new fiber structure to better couple pump light into the fiber. military turned to flowing-gas lasers to remove the waste heat. But so much heat accumulated in the thick glass rods that they shattered. Elias Snitzer had used a fiber-like core-cladding structure to make the first glass laser at the American Optical Company in 1961, and military developers had tried to scale such lasers into logs that would fire powerful pulses. Having covered the Airborne Laser, a megawatt-class chemical-laser behemoth that filled the interior of a Boeing 747, he expected that a laser weapon would have to be massive.įor decades, the Pentagon had likewise thought it needed big lasers to make powerful weapons. Navy announced plans to test its 30-kW LaWS (Laser Weapon System) on the USS Ponce several years ago, the technology news editor of New Scientist asked me what type of laser it used-and was astounded when I told him it contained industrial fiber lasers. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2023
Categories |