Gooch & Housego (G&H) co-ordinated the ISLA project (Integrated Disruptive Components for 2 µm Fibre Laser), with project partners II-VI Laser Enterprises, JDSU, ROFIN, Trinity College Dublin, the University of Southampton, and Vivid Components.
Over the last three and a half years the project has had a major impact on the development of components for 2 µm fiber lasers. Amongst the major advances made in the project were:
- Thulium fibers with 70% slope efficiency at >100 W output
- Holmium fibers with 75% slope efficiency
- Amplitude modulators and tunable filters
- Fiber-coupled isolators, pump combiners and low loss taps
- Wavelength-flattened couplers
- Fiber coupled silicon pulse pickers
- Graphene based modelockers
- 793 nm diodes >38 W in 105 µm fiber with 0.15 NA demonstrated
- Wavelength stabilised 793 nm diodes with 60% power conversion efficiency
The project culminated in a workshop held on 26 June 2015 after Laser World of Photonics, Munich. Slides from this event, summarising the technology developed in the project, and including a range of presentations from external speakers on applications for 2 µm lasers, may be found on the project website.
With the project completed, work continues at The Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) in Southampton, UK to build a 0.5 kW CW 2 µm fibre laser based on ISLA components. This will be characterised at the ORC, and then transferred for industrial testing at the ROFIN Laser Applications Laboratory, Hamburg.
G&H has commercialised a large number of the products developed for ISLA, including fused fiber devices, acousto-optic filters and modulators, details of which can be found on the G&H website.
For further information please contact: [email protected] regarding ISLA or [email protected] for G&H specific enquiries.
About Gooch & Housego
Gooch & Housego is a photonics technology business headquartered in Ilminster, Somerset, UK with operations in the USA and Europe. A world leader in its field, the company researches, designs, engineers and manufactures advanced photonic systems, components and instrumentation for applications in the aerospace & defense, industrial, life sciences and scientific research sectors. World leading design, development and manufacturing expertise is offered across a broad range of complementary technologies.