| List of Figures .................................................................................................... | ix |
| List of Tables ..................................................................................................... | xx |
| Foreword ........................................................................................................... | xxi |
| | |
| Chapter 1: Introduction.................................................................................. | 1 |
| Why High-Power Fiber Lasers?......................................................................... | 2 |
| History of Fiber Lasers (1840 to 1985).............................................................. | 2 |
| Recent Events and Programs (1985 to Present)................................................. | 4 |
| Current State of the Art of High-Power Fiber Lasers ........................................ | 9 |
| Summary.......................................................................................................... | 10 |
| References........................................................................................................ | 10 |
| | |
| Chapter 2: Introduction to Optical Waveguides............................................ | 13 |
| Light Confinement in Optical Waveguides by Total Internal Reflection .............. | 13 |
| Transverse Modes in Optical Waveguides....................................................... | 18 |
| Planar Waveguide Mode Derivation Using Ray Optics ..................................... | 18 |
| Planar Waveguide Mode Derivation Using Maxwell's Equations........................ | 21 |
| Cylindrical Waveguide Mode Derivation Using Maxwell's Equation.................. | 28 |
| Summary.......................................................................................................... | 35 |
| Practice Problems............................................................................................. | 37 |
| References........................................................................................................ | 38 |
| | |
| Chapter 3: Beam Propagation Modeling for Optical Waveguides .............. | 39 |
| Fast Fourier Transform Beam Propagation Method .......................................... | 40 |
| Two-Dimensional, Finite-Difference Beam Propagation Method..................... | 42 |
| Thomas Algorithm for Solving Tridiagonal Systems of Equations..................... | 43 |
| Slab Waveguide Model.................................................................................. | 44 |
| Three-Dimensional FD-BPM Using Cartesian coordinates............................ | 48 |
| Beam Propagation Modeling Using Cylindrical Coordinates ......................... | 54 |
| Optical Waveguide Eigenmodes ...................................................................... | 64 |
| Summary......................................................................................................... | 66 |
| Practice Problems............................................................................................. | 67 |
| References........................................................................................................ | 69 |
| | |
| Chapter 4: High-Power Optical Fiber Design and Fabrication .................... | 71 |
| Dual-Clad Fibers.............................................................................................. | 71 |
| Large Mode Area Fibers .................................................................................. | 73 |
| Large Mode Area Fibers and Bend Loss ....................................................... | 73 |
| Bend-Resistant, Large Mode Area Fibers...................................................... | 76 |
| Polarization-Maintaining Fibers ...................................................................... | 78 |
| Microstructure or Holey Fibers........................................................................ | 80 |
| Solid-Core Photonic Crystal Fibers .............................................................. | 81 |
| Other Novel Fiber Designs .............................................................................. | 86 |
| Hollow-Core Photonic Crystal Fibers........................................................... | 86 |
| Fiber Rod Lasers ........................................................................................... | 87 |
| Multicore Fibers ............................................................................................ | 87 |
| Fibers with Large Flattened Modes............................................................... | 90 |
| Helical Core Fibers ....................................................................................... | 92 |
| Optical Fiber Taxonomy .................................................................................. | 95 |
| Non–Silica-Based Glass Fibers........................................................................ | 96 |
| Phosphate Glass Fibers................................................................................. | 96 |
| Chalcogenide Glass Fibers............................................................................ | 97 |
| Fluorozirconate Glass (ZBLAN) Fibers ........................................................ | 97 |
| Glass Fiber Fabrication.................................................................................... | 99 |
| Summary.......................................................................................................... | 99 |
| Practice Problems........................................................................................... | 101 |
| References...................................................................................................... | 102 |
| | |
| Chapter 5: Fiber Lasers.............................................................................. | 105 |
| Fiber Laser Oscillator .................................................................................... | 105 |
| Fiber Cavity, Gain Medium, and Resonator .................................................. | 106 |
| Longitudinal Cavity Modes ........................................................................... | 107 |
| Fiber Laser and Amplifier Pumping Techniques ........................................... | 109 |
| Fiber End Pumping ........................................................................................ | 112 |
| Fiber Side Pumping........................................................................................ | 114 |
| Mode/Core Overlap Factor ............................................................................ | 115 |
| Quantum, Slope, and Wall-Plug efficiencies................................................. | 116 |
| Rate Equations ............................................................................................... | 117 |
| Optical Gain................................................................................................... | 121 |
| Fiber Laser Output Power Calculations......................................................... | 125 |
| Rare-earth, Ion-doped Fiber Lasers and Amplifiers..................................... | 129 |
| Neodymium.................................................................................................... | 129 |
| Ytterbium ....................................................................................................... | 129 |
| Erbium-Ytterbium Co-Doping....................................................................... | 132 |
| Directly Pumped Erbium ............................................................................... | 133 |
| Thulium.......................................................................................................... | 133 |
| Summary........................................................................................................ | 136 |
| Practice Problems........................................................................................... | 138 |
| References...................................................................................................... | 139 |
| | |
| Chapter 6: Mechanisms That Limit Fiber Laser and Amplifier Power ........ | 141 |
| Fiber Damage Mechanisms............................................................................ | 142 |
| Fiber Nonlinear effects.................................................................................. | 144 |
| Stimulated Brillouin Scattering ................................................................... | 145 |
| Stimulated Raman Scattering ...................................................................... | 155 |
| Limitations Due to Photo Darkening ............................................................. | 156 |
| Summary........................................................................................................ | 156 |
| Practice Problems........................................................................................... | 157 |
| References...................................................................................................... | 158 |
| | |
| Chapter 7: Pulsed Fiber Lasers .................................................................. | 161 |
| Methods for Producing Pulses on Laser Outputs........................................... | 162 |
| Q-Switching ................................................................................................. | 162 |
| Mode Locking................................................................................................ | 164 |
| Amplified Seed Pulse ................................................................................... | 166 |
| Nonlinear Effects in Pulsed Fiber Lasers....................................................... | 167 |
| Stimulated Brillouin Scattering and Stimulated Raman Scattering ............ | 167 |
| Four-Wave Mixing ....................................................................................... | 168 |
| Self-Phase Modulation................................................................................. | 168 |
| Self-Focusing ............................................................................................... | 170 |
| Group Velocity Dispersion............................................................................. | 171 |
| Pulse Compression......................................................................................... | 177 |
| Pulse Compression with External Gratings................................................. | 177 |
| Pulse Compression in All-Fiber Ring Lasers .............................................. | 177 |
| Some Pulse Energy Limitations and Solutions.............................................. | 179 |
| ASE Self-Saturation ..................................................................................... | 179 |
| Glass Damage.............................................................................................. | 180 |
| Summary........................................................................................................ | 181 |
| Practice Problems............................................................................................. | 183 |
| References........................................................................................................... | 184 |
| | |
| Chapter 8: Overview of Fourier Optics ........................................................ | 185 |
| Wave Propagation, Diffraction, and Interference .......................................... | 185 |
| Fourier Series................................................................................................. | 189 |
| Selected Fourier Transform Theorems and Transform Pairs............................ | 190 |
| The Fraunhofer Far-Field Approximation ..................................................... | 191 |
Far-Field Irradiance Patterns Produced by Rectangular Apertures with Uniform Field Distributions................................................................................. | 195 |
Far-Field Irradiance Patterns Produced by Circular Apertures with Uniform Field Distributions................................................................................................ | 197 |
| Far-Field Irradiance Produced by a Gaussian Field Distribution ..................... | 199 |
| Far-Field Irradiance Pattern for Truncated Gaussian Beams............................ | 201 |
| Far-Field Irradiance Patterns Produced by Multiple Apertures........................ | 203 |
| Observation of Fraunhofer Diffraction at Lens Focal Plane.......................... | 206 |
| Summary........................................................................................................ | 207 |
| Practice Problems........................................................................................... | 209 |
| References...................................................................................................... | 210 |
| | |
| Chapter 9: Beam Quality and Brightness..................................................... | 211 |
| Beam Divergence and Far-Field Beam Size .................................................. | 211 |
| Gaussian Beams and Their Far-Field Spots ....................................................... | 212 |
| Uniformly Illuminated Circular Aperture and Its Far-Field Spot (Airy Pattern) ... | 216 |
| Measures of Beam Quality............................................................................. | 217 |
| Beam Parameter Product and M2 ................................................................ | 217 |
| Power in the Bucket ..................................................................................... | 222 |
| Brightness .................................................................................................... | 225 |
| Strehl Ratio .................................................................................................. | 227 |
| Beam Quality of Truncated Gaussian Beams ................................................ | 229 |
| Summary........................................................................................................ | 231 |
| Practice Problems........................................................................................... | 233 |
| References...................................................................................................... | 234 |
| | |
| Chapter 10: Beam Combination .................................................................... | 235 |
| Beam-Combining Architectures..................................................................... | 236 |
| Incoherent Beam Combining ......................................................................... | 236 |
| Coherent Beam Combining............................................................................ | 237 |
| Active Coherent Beam Combining................................................................ | 238 |
| Passive Coherent Beam Combining ............................................................. | 245 |
| Spectral Beam Combining ............................................................................. | 253 |
| Spectral Beam Combining with Diffraction Gratings .................................. | 254 |
| Spectral Beam Combining with Volume Bragg Gratings ............................. | 258 |
| Simultaneous Passive Coherent and Spectral Beam Combining................... | 264 |
| Architecture Comparisons ............................................................................. | 265 |
| Summary........................................................................................................ | 266 |
| Practice Problems........................................................................................... | 269 |
| References...................................................................................................... | 270 |
| | |
Chapter 11: Tiled-Aperture, Fiber Laser Array Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis............................................................................ | 273 |
| Seven-Element Fiber Laser Array.................................................................. | 276 |
| Nineteen-Element, Tiled-Aperture, Truncated Gaussian Fiber Arrays.......... | 283 |
| Far-Field Irradiance for the 19-Element, Truncated Gaussian Coherent Array.................................................................................................................. | 284 |
| Far-Field Irradiance for 19-Element, Truncated Gaussian Incoherent Array.................................................................................................................. | 292 |
Degradation Comparisons of 19-Element, Truncated Gaussian, Tiled-Aperature Coherent and Incoherent Array............................................... | 297 |
| Thirty-Seven–Element, Tiled-Aperture Fiber Array............................................ | 299 |
| On-Target Phase Correction for Coherent Tiled-Aperture Arrays ..................... | 303 |
| Electronic Beam Steering with Coherent Tiled-Aperture Arrays........................ | 311 |
| Summary........................................................................................................ | 315 |
| Practice Problems........................................................................................... | 317 |
| References...................................................................................................... | 319 |
| | |
| Chapter 12: Focusing Laser Beams on Targets........................................... | 321 |
| Focusing Gaussian Beams ............................................................................. | 321 |
| Focusing Coherent, HcP Array Outputs........................................................ | 326 |
| Summary........................................................................................................ | 332 |
| Practice Problems........................................................................................... | 334 |
| References...................................................................................................... | 334 |
| | |
| Chapter 13: Atmospheric Beam Propagation............................................... | 335 |
| Beam Propagation Approximation Using Time-Averaged Spread Angle...... | 335 |
| FD-BPM for Atmospheric Beam Propagation............................................... | 341 |
| Finite-Difference Beam Propagation with Atmospheric Turbulence............. | 347 |
| Beam Distortion by Thermal Blooming ........................................................ | 351 |
| Summary........................................................................................................ | 353 |
| Practice Problems........................................................................................... | 355 |
| References...................................................................................................... | 356 |
| | |
| Chapter 14: Fiber Laser System Design Considerations ........................... | 357 |
| Continuous Wave (cW) or Pulsed ................................................................. | 358 |
| Wavelength .................................................................................................... | 359 |
| Bandwidth—Narrow Linewidth or Broadband ............................................. | 363 |
| Beam Quality and Spot Size/Shape on Target ............................................... | 363 |
| Beam Quality and Spot Size for Single-Beam Systems................................. | 363 |
| Beam Quality and Spot Size for Multiple-Beam Systems ............................. | 367 |
| Beam Control................................................................................................. | 371 |
| Thermal Management and Thermal Control.................................................. | 372 |
| Size, Weight, and Power ................................................................................ | 378 |
| Reliability....................................................................................................... | 383 |
| Ruggedness .................................................................................................... | 384 |
| Supportability/Maintainability ........................................................................... | 384 |
| Life-Cycle Cost.............................................................................................. | 385 |
| Summary........................................................................................................ | 386 |
| Practice Problems........................................................................................... | 388 |
| References...................................................................................................... | 390 |
| | |
| Chapter 15: Applications and Future Directions......................................... | 391 |
| Areas for Further Research ............................................................................ | 391 |
| Monolithic Fiber Components........................................................................ | 391 |
| Thermal Management..................................................................................... | 393 |
| Efficiency...................................................................................................... | 393 |
| Single-Fiber Power Scaling............................................................................ | 394 |
| Beam Combining ............................................................................................ | 396 |
| Eye-Safer Wavelengths................................................................................. | 397 |
| Concluding Remarks...................................................................................... | 398 |
| References...................................................................................................... | 399 |
| | |
| Appendix A: Physical Constants and Units....................................................... | 401 |
| Appendix B: Electromagnetic Wave Derivation................................................ | 403 |
| Appendix C: Beer's Law ................................................................................... | 411 |
| Appendix D: Fourier Transform of Gaussian Function..................................... | 413 |
| Appendix E: Bragg Diffraction/Reflection........................................................ | 415 |
| Appendix F: Engineering Economics Short Course (Life-cycle Cost Analysis)......................................................................................................... | 417 |