The Directed Energy Professional Society (DEPS) will be hosting a full-day (0800-1600) "High Power Fiber Laser" professional development short course, in conjunction with the 6th Workshop on Specialty Optical Fibers and Their Applications. The course will be held at the conference hotel (Hotel on Market) on Tuesday 5 November 2019 and presented by Dr. Ben Eshel of the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL.) The course is open to all attendees (Distribution A) with course materials and lunch included. For WSOF attendees, the cost will be $300 and for those not participating in the workshop, $400.
Please complete the below short course registration form and email to Cristina Crowson Cristina@deps.org in order to secure your seat.
Register here!
RSVP's must be received no later than October 20.
Click here for more information on the 2019 Workshop on Specialty Optical Fibers.
Course Description
Fiber laser technology has the potential to make a significant impact in various industrial and defense applications, from machining and additive manufacturing to LIDAR, remote sensing and high energy laser weapons systems. This emerging laser technology offers many intrinsic advantages over traditional DPSSL, as highlighted by widespread publications in the research community. The development of high-power fiber lasers continues to demonstrate an impressive array of power scaling results, both CW and pulsed and at wavelengths from 1um to the eye-safe 1.55 um and 2 um and even at mid-IR wavelengths. Obvious advantages associated with the technology are high wall-plug efficiency leading to reduced electrical power requirements and easier system cooling, but also robustness, good beam quality and highly flexible system performance leading to an overall low SWAP-C2.
This tutorial will cover the major aspects of designing and building a fiber laser, from the fiber itself through the various state of the art fiber components and discuss the system parameter space that best makes use of the intrinsic advantages of the technology. In addition, the physical limitations to scaling of laser systems to high power are addressed.
This course will enable you to:
- Understand the advantages fiber laser technology compared to other laser sources as well as its current limitations.
- Identify the relevant architectures, components and fibers involved in designing a fiber laser and the steps involved in building a system
- Have an overview of the recent advances in fiber laser technology and an understanding of what the future technology roadmap looks like
Topics to be covered:
- Optical waveguides and basic fiber parameters
- Fiber designs
- Double-clad, non-circular cladding, large-mode area, polarization maintaining, etc.
- Rare earth dopants and Spectroscopy
- Yb at 1 um, Er at 1.55 um, Tm and Ho at 2 um
- Mid-infrared Dopants – (Er, Ho, Dy)
- Component specifications and availability
- Couplers, isolators, seed laser diodes, etc.)
- Nonlinear effects in fibers and limitations to scaling
- Stimulated Raman Scattering, Stimulated Brillouin Scattering, Thermal-Mode Instability, Nonlinear self-focus (damage thresholds), etc.
- Pulsed fiber lasers
- Nano-, pico- and femtosecond system architectures
- Recent results in literature
- Peak power, repetition rate, average power, mode quality
Target Audience
This course would benefit advanced undergraduate, graduate students, scientists and engineers with a basic knowledge of laser physics. An undergraduate level knowledge of physics (specifically optics and electromagnetism) is assumed.
Instructor Bio
Dr. Eshel is a recent Ph.D. graduate from the Air Force Institute of Technology where his study focused on developing next generation gas lasers. He has facilitated and guided the research of several M.S. students and was the primary researcher on a multi-million dollar multi-university research initiative grant provided by the Directed Energy Joint Transition Office. His main research focus has been in laser diagnostics of low energy density rare gas plasmas for the development of a novel high-energy laser and has recently demonstrated the technology necessary for the production of an atmospheric pressure, spatially homogeneous, and large volume rare gas plasma. Dr. Eshel holds a B.A. from Cornell University in physics and an M.S. and Ph.D. from AFIT in applied physics with a focus on lasers, optics and spectroscopy.
Dr. Eshel recently organized and hosted the first High Power Fiber Lasers Educational Workshop at AFIT which brought together 70 members of government, academia and industry to educate the workforce at WPAFB in the technology and scaling limitations of high power fiber lasers. He is currently a government civilian working at the Air Force Research Laboratories focused on obtaining, developing, and testing novel materials for continuous-wave and pulsed high power fiber lasers.
Last updated: 17 September 2019
