MIDFIL · Mid-Infrared Fibre Lasers

Mid-Infrared Fibre Lasers

There is a strong interest in the development of mid-IR lasers (2-5 µm) mainly because of their potential applications in medical, military defense, laser ranging, telecommunications, gas detection and molecular spectroscopy. Although there have been many techniques to generate 3-5 µm solid-state bulk mid-IR lasers, the development of mid-IR fibre CW and pulsed lasers are still of great science and technology interests because of the unique advantages of fibre lasers. The key goal of MIDFIL project is the knowledge transfer from the Marie Curie International Incoming Fellow Dr J. Li, who has strong background in fibre laser science and technology and has unique knowledge and skills in the specific area of mid-IR fibre lasers, to the EU host –Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies (AIPT) of Aston University to establish a new research direction in mid-IR photonics and training the young post-docs, Ph.D and Master students. MIDFIL will also aim the knowledge transfer to EU co-host Universities to collaboratively research in novel mid-IR fibre laser science and technology. Dr J. Li’s expertise and knowledge has been integrated with the AIPT’s advanced in-fibre grating fabrication technology. Through this project, we have achieved a number of novel results in mid-IR fibre lasers, as listed below: (1) We have constructed the numerical modeling of cascade erbium-doped and holmium-doped fluoride fibre lasers for the first time. (2) FBGs with center wavelength from 1800 nm to 2300 nm have been fabricated on silica fibre SM28 and SM2000 by a 244 nm UV source in our laboratory from a frequency doubled Ar+ laser using the two-beam holographic technique. Based on our designed new fluoride fibre with high concentration dopant Ce3+, we have inscribed the FBG on fluoride fibre by UV inscription technique. (3) We have demonstrated a double-end pumped ~3 µm passively Q-switching induced ~2 µm gain-switched dual wavelength Ho3+-doped fluoride fibre lasers for the first time. (4) We have demonstrated a tunable passively Q-switched Ho3+-doped ZBLAN fiber laser based on Fe2+:ZnSe crystal around 3 μm. (5) We have demonstrated a topological insulator (TI) passively Q-switched Ho3+-doped ZBLAN fiber laser around 3 µm for the first time. (6) We have designed a new Semiconductor saturable absorber mirror and demonstrated a ~3 µm SESAM-based single-end pumped passively Q-switched Ho3+-doped fluoride fibre laser. (7) We have demonstrated an all-fibre Tm3+-doped silica fibre laser operating at a wide selectable wavelength range from 1900 nm to 2200 nm by using FBGs as wavelength selection elements. (8) We have demonstrated a self-starting all-fibre passively mode-locked Tm3+-doped fibre laser based on nonlinear loop mirror (NOLM) for the first time. (9) We have fabricated a 45 degree tilted fiber grating (TFG) centered at 2000 nm with polarization dependent loss (PDL) of >12 dB at 1850 nm~2150 nm range. (10) We have demonstrated a nonlinear polarization rotation based all-fiber passively mode-locked Tm3+-doped fiber laser by using a 45 degree TFGs as an in-line polarizer. (11) We have firstly fabricated an all-fiber Lyot filter including two 45 degree TFG and a section of PM fiber and introduced it into a NPR mode locked Tm-doped fiber laser. The results indicated that the component can not only lead the wavelength of the solitons to being tuned continuously by simply changing the environmental temperature, but also well suppress the Kelly sidebands of the soliton pulses. It provided an efficient strategy for high-performance pulse amplifying. Knowledge transfer from Dr. Li to the host AIPT have been conducted by giving talks and seminars to the group and post-docs and Ph.D students. Dr. Li has closely supervised one MSc student and two Ph.D students. He have given three talks to on the results of his research work based on this project as follows: (1) “Recent progress on mid-IR fibre lasers”, 12th of September, 2013, 10:00-11:00, 7th floor, North Wing, Main building. (2) “SESAM-based dual wavelength fluoride fibre lasers”, 16th of July, 2014, 11:00-12:00, 3th floor, North Wing, Main building. (3) “45 TFG based mode-locked fibre laser at mid-IR band”, 11th of January, 2015, 15:00-16:00, 3th floor, North Wing, Main building. Knowledge transfer to European co-hosts through some workshops and research collaborations. He has giving a talk “mid-IR pulsed fibre lasers”, at Parma University and performed the joined work on Supercontinnum generation based on micro-structure chalcognide fibre.

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