Mid Sweden University

The focus of this study was the development of a second generation of fiber lasers internally cooled by anti-Stokes fluorescence. The laser consisted of a length of a single-mode fiber spliced to fiber Bragg gratings to form the optical resonator. The fiber was single-moded at the pump (1040 nm) and signal (1064 nm) wavelengths. Its core was heavily doped with Yb, in the initial form of CaF2 nanoparticles, and co-doped with Al to reduce quenching and improve the cooling efficiency. After optimizing the fiber length (4.1 m) and output-coupler reflectivity (3.3%), the fiber laser exhibited a threshold of 160 mW, an optical efficiency of 56.8%, and a radiation-balanced output power (no net heat generation) of 192 mW. On all three metrics, this performance is significantly better than the only previously reported radiation-balanced fiber laser, which is even more meaningful given that the small size of the single-mode fiber core (7.8-µm diameter). At the maximum output power (∼2 W), the average fiber temperature was still barely above room temperature (428 mK). This work demonstrates that with anti-Stokes pumping, it is possible to induce significant gain and energy storage in a small-core Yb-doped fiber while keeping the fiber cool. 

This paper reports a second generation of radiation-balanced fiber laser and amplifier cooled internally using anti-Stokes fluorescence by pumping them at 1040 nm. In both devices the gain medium is a single-mode silica fiber with a core heavily doped with Yb³⁺, initially encapsulated in CaF₂ nanoparticles, and co-doped with Al to reduce quenching and increase the cooling efficiency. After optimization of its length (4.1 m) and its output coupler reflectivity (3.3%), the 1065- nm continuous-wave fiber laser has a threshold of 160 mW and a radiation-balanced (no net heat generation) output power of 192 mW, or nearly 70% higher than the previous radiation-balanced fiber laser. At its radiation-balanced point, its optical efficiency is 56.8%. The single-frequency, single-mode fiber amplifier, constructed with the same fiber, was optimum with a length of 6.8 m, and it had a radiation-balanced gain of 20 dB: it amplified an 800-μW signal to 84.2 mW with 433 mW of input pump power. The significance of this result is underscored by the small diameter of the single-mode fiber core (7.8 μm), which makes cooling more challenging. This study further demonstrates the viability of achieving substantial gain and energy extraction in a small-core Yb-doped silica fiber while effectively utilizing anti-Stokes fluorescence to keep it cool.

Optical cooling in Yb-doped silica fibers using anti-Stokes fluorescence has become a subject of great interest in the fiber laser community. This paper provides an update on the development of silica fibers designed specifically to enhance their cooling properties. This growing list includes a new, nearly single-mode fiber with a borophosphosilicate core that produced –65 mK of cooling with only 260 mW of 1040-nm pump power. The silica compositions that have now been successfully cooled at atmospheric pressure by anti-Stokes fluorescence by our team include aluminosilicate, aluminofluorosilicate, borophosphosilicate, and aluminosilicate doped with one of three different alkali-earth nanoparticles (Ba, Sr, and Ca). By fitting the measured temperature dependence of the cooled fiber on pump power, two key parameters that control the degree of cooling are inferred, namely the critical quenching concentration and the absorptive loss due to impurities. The inferred values compiled for the fibers that cooled indicate that the extracted heat is highest when the Yb concentration is 2 wt.% or more (to maximize heat extraction), the Al concentration is ~0.8 wt.% or greater (to reduce quenching), and the absorptive loss is below approximately 15 dB/km, and ideally below 5 dB/km (to minimize heating due to pump absorption). Only two of the reported fibers, an LaF3-doped and an LuF3-doped nanoparticle fiber, did not cool, because their Yb and Al concentrations were not sufficiently high. This analysis shows that through careful composition control (especially the Al and Yb concentrations) and minimization of the OH contamination, a new generation of Yb-doped silica fibers is emerging with higher Yb concentrations, greater resistance to quenching, and lower residual loss than commercial Yb-doped fibers. They can be expected to have a significant impact not only on optically cooled devices but also on a much broader range of fiber lasers and amplifiers. 

For applications such as laser cooling of doped fibers, where it is critical to measure accurately the temperature of a cooled fiber that is very close to room temperature, it is paramount to develop a reliable, very short (mm) fiber temperature sensor with millikelvin resolution and very little drift. We report a second generation of a unique slow-light fiber Bragg grating (FBG) temperature sensor that meets these stringent requirements. Experiments and modeling establish that its temperature response depends only on well-known material constants of the silica FBG and the response of the probe laser's wavelength controller. The response is independent of the linewidth of the slow-light resonance, hence different FBGs and/or resonances have the exact same response. Examples of measured cooling in optically pumped Yb-doped fibers show that more reliable thermal contact with the cooled fiber is obtained by wrapping the FBG and the cooled fiber. 

Both scientific interests and industrial applications have stimulated the advance of single-frequency laser technology. The high spatial and temporal coherence of this technology has facilitated many applications such as gravitational wave detection, high-precision fiber sensors, high-resolution spectroscopy, holography, and nonlinear optical conversion. However, this is currently achieved through large footprint lasers with limited portability and mobility. Therefore, there is a need to reduce the size of these lasers into a compact format. Power performance of hundreds of watts in the near-infrared spectrum and tens of watts in the visible and UV spectra for continuous (CW) operation mode and pulse energies up to several tens of mJ in pulsed operation mode are needed. 

An amplification structure for single-frequency lasers that meets these requirements is the master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA). However, compactness imposes several constraints on the MOPA design. The main challenge is the limited output power of the single-frequency fiber MOPA due to the onset of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in the amplifier fiber. SBS arises from the interaction of acoustic phonons with the propagating signal wave and is converted into a frequency-shifted, backward-propagating wave. SBS is manifested through high-intensity pulses propagating in the backward direction, which can be very harmful for optical components and the seed laser itself. Hence, the suppression of SBS is crucial to the power optimization of the MOPA. This thesis therefore focuses on investigating different SBS suppression techniques that fit a compact MOPA design. More specifically, this is implemented by studying the efficiency of the strain distribution technique applied to the amplifier fiber and the use of custom and commercial highly Yb- doped fibers both in CW and pulse operating MOPAs. Using highly Yb-doped fibers presents challenges with respect to the composition of the fiber material and in high- power operation that can have undesirable degradational effects, such as photodarkening and thermal load generation, and these have been investigated and discussed in this thesis. 

As a result of the different mitigation approaches, output power approaching 100 W in CW mode operation and pulse energies near mJ in pulse mode operation are demonstrated in only one amplification stage, showing the feasibility of a MOPA design with high performance and a small footprint. This may facilitate many applications in the visible and UV spectral ranges that require mobility and portability. 

Både vetenskapliga intressen och industriella tillämpningar har stimulerat utvecklingen inom singelfrekvens laserteknologi. Den höga rumsliga- och tidsmässiga koherensen hos dessa  lasrar har underlättat många tillämpningar såsom gravitationsvågdetektering, fibersensorer med hög precision, högupplöst spektroskopi, holografi och ickelinjär optisk konvertering. Detta uppnås för närvarande genom användande av relativt stora lasrar med en begränsad portabilitet och rörlighet. Det finns därför ett behov av att göra dessa lasrar mer kompakta. Samtidigt efterfrågas en förbättrad effektprestanda på hundratals Watt i det nära infraröda spektrala området och tiotals Watt i det synliga- och ultravioletta området för kontinuerligt (CW) driftläge samt pulsenergier upp till flera tiotals mJ i pulsat driftläge.

En typ av förstärkare för singelfrekvenslasrar som uppfyller dessa kravär så kallade master oscillator effektförstärkare (MOPA). En kompakt design sätter dock flera begränsningar på dessa förstärkare. Huvudutmaningen är uppkomsten av stimulerad Brillouin spridning (SBS)  i förstärkarfibern som begränsar uteffekten. SBS uppstår genom en växelverkan mellan akustiska fononer och signalvågen som omvandlas till en utbredningsvåg som är frekvensförskjuten och bakåt-propagerande. Dessa bakåt-propagerande vågor kan skada optiska komponenter i förstärkaren och i själva signal lasern. Därför är en minskning av SBS avgörnade för en effektiv effektoptimering av förstärkaren. Denna avhandling fokuserar på att undersöka olika tekniker för att minska SBS som dessutom passar för en kompakt MOPA-design. Mer specifikt implementeras detta genom att studera effektiviteten av en distribuerad töjning som tillämpas på förstärkarfibern samt användningen av särskilt anpassade- och kommersiella Yb-dopade fibrer både för kontinuerliga och pulsstyrda förstärkare. Att använda Yb-dopade fibrer med hög Yb-koncentration innebär stora utmaningar med avseende på fibermaterialets sammansättning, som kan medföra en negativ inverkan på förstärkarens prestanda i form av inducerade optiska förluster (s.k. photodarkening), försämrad strålkvalite' och generering av termiska förluster. Dessa har undersökts och diskuteras i denna avhandling.

Som ett resultat av de olika  begränsningsmetoderna, demonstreras förstärkare med en uteffekt som närmar sig 100 W i CW driftläge och pulsenergier nära mJ-området i pulsat läge med användade av endast ett förstärkarssteg. Detta visar genomförbar-heten av en MOPA-design med hög prestanda och ett kompakt format. Detta kan underlätta användningen för många tillämpningar inom det synliga och ultravioletta spektrala området som ståller krav på en ökad mobilitet och portabilitet.

Single‐frequency lasers are essential for high‐resolution spectroscopy and sensing applications as they combine high‐frequency stability with low noise and high output power stability. For many of these applications, there is increasing interest in power‐scaling single‐frequency sources, both in the near‐infrared and visible spectral range. We report the second‐harmonic generation of 670 μJ at 532 nm of a single‐frequency fiber amplifier signal operating in the quasi‐continuous‐wave mode in a 10‐mm periodically poled Mg‐doped lithium niobate (MgO:PPLN) crystal, while increasing compactness. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest pulse energy generated in this crystal, which may find applications in the visible and UV such as remote Raman spectroscopy. 

Biometric signatures based on either the physiological or behavioural features of a person have been widely used for identification and authentication. However, few strategies have been developed that combine the two types of features in one signature. Here, we report a type of biometric signature based on the triboelectricity of the human body (TEHB) that combines these two types of features. This triboelectric biometric signature (TEBS) can be accomplished by anyone regardless of the physical condition, as it can be performed by many parts of the body. Different TEBS can be identified using a convolutional neural network (CNN) model with a test accuracy of up to 1.0. The TEBS has been further used for text encryption and decryption with a high sensitivity to changes. Moreover, a dual signed digital signature for enhanced security has been proposed. Our findings provide a new type of TEBS that can be generally used and demonstrated in applications. 

We report on a single-frequency fiber master oscillator power amplifier utilizing a polarization-maintaining step-index fiber with an Al/Ce/F core-glass composition doped with a very high Yb concentration (0.25 at.%). This design made it possible to use a very short fiber (~1 m) and to coil it in a tight radius (4 cm in the amplifier, while 2 cm gave similarly negligible bending loss) so that the packaged system is one of the most compact reported to date (~0.6 L). The use of a short fiber increased the threshold for stimulated Brillouin scattering well above 100 W while maintaining near-ideal beam quality. The fiber was pumped with a diode-pumped solid-state laser and cooled passively by spooling it on a grooved aluminum mandrel. The amplifier produced a strongly linearly polarized output at 1064 nm in the fundamental mode (M2 ≤ 1.2) with a 150 kHz linewidth and a power of 81.5 W for 107 W of launched pump power. No deleterious effects from the elevated thermal load were observed. The residual photodarkening loss resulting from the high Yb concentration, found to be small (~0.7 dB/m inferred at 1064 nm) with accelerated aging, reduced the output power by only ~20% after 150 h of operation. 

Fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) with strong apodized index modulations behave like an in-line Fabry-Perot interferometer and exhibit a series of narrow resonances in the short-wavelength portion of their transmission spectrum. These resonances have proven invaluable for detecting extremely small strains (30-femtostrain/√Hz level) or temperature changes (millidegreeC/√Hz level). The sensitivity of these fiber sensors is limited by the linewidth and peak transmission of the resonance used to interrogate the sensor, which are themselves limited by the intrinsic loss of the grating. In this work, significantly narrower and stronger resonances are demonstrated by introducing a small amount of optical gain in the FBG to offset the intrinsic loss and create a resonator with a much smaller net internal loss. The fiber Bragg grating is written in an Er-doped single-mode fiber and optically pumped to provide the required gain. The device reported here is a 6.5-mm grating with an AC index modulation of 1.59×10-3. With only 30 μW of pump power absorbed by the grating (32.6 mW launched), the fundamental resonance of the FBG was observed to narrow from 737 fm in the absence of pump to a record linewidth of 8.5 fm. The measured peak transmission of the resonance improved from ~-37 dB to -0.2 dB. A new model that predicts the slow-light resonance spectrum of a slow-light grating in the presence of optical gain is presented. This model is in good quantitative agreement with the measured evolution of the resonance linewidth as the pump power and the power of the laser that probes the resonance lineshape are varied.

This Letter reports the behavior of the slow-light resonances of a strong apodized fiber Bragg grating (FBG) in which the intrinsic loss is compensated for by a small internal gain. The 6.5-mm FBG, written with a femtosecond laser in an Er-doped single-mode fiber, was pumped at similar to 4475 nm just below the lasing threshold to offset most of its intrinsic loss, thereby narrowing its resonances. The fundamental slow-light resonance was measured to have a linewidth of 8.5 fm, or a record group velocity of similar to 22 km/s, and a peak transmission near unity (-0.2 dB). The measured dependencies of the linewidth and peak transmission on pump power agree well with a new model that predicts the transmission spectrum of loss-compensated FBGs in the presence of pump and signal saturation.