Although fiber lasers have excellent power scaling capabilities, high efficiency, and robustness, some applications require solid-state laser technologies in cases of specific wavelength regimes or high pulse energies, where fiber laser technology is not applicable. Yet even in these cases, high-power fiber components can provide significant advantages to any solid-state laser pumping architecture.

Especially the fiber array technology opens up completely new scaling concepts in solid-state laser pumping. The combination of several pump sources and the design of a precise array pattern allows for almost arbitrarily shaped pump geometries with kW level pump powers, flat top or line profiles, or even more complex arrangements. This can be crucial for optimizing thermal management and thermal lensing, or for achieving ideal gain distribution in the laser material in either end-pumped or side-pumped configurations. For example, the combination of several pump diodes in a linear fiber array in combination with a cylindrical lens can generate a custom-designed line focus ideally suited for slab-like pumping geometries. The capabilities of fabricating monolithic arrays in combination with endcaps including various lens geometries enables power scaling of pump concepts up to the kW regime. More complex geometries can be realized by two-dimensional fiber arrays combined with microlens arrays to achieve almost any desired pump profile.

The delivery of kW-level pump power is an extremely vital technology for laser fusion within the Fusion 2040 program and will help in making inertial fusion energy a viable and economically attractive power source.

Apart from one- or two-dimensional arrays, the high power capability and expertise of FiberBridge Photonics’ including fiber connections, spliceless endcaps and collimators can help your project to deliver the kW-level pump power safely, with the highest-quality AR coating for minimum back reflections and an additional option of including an integrated curvature. Please contact us to discuss your pumping requirements!