A high-repetition laser system for generating ultra-short pulses according to the principle of pulse decoupling is described. This is achieved by the use of an amplifying laser medium, a laser resonator with at least one resonator mirror and at least one pulse decoupling component, a saturable absorber mirror, and a pump source for pumping the laser medium wherein the pulse decoupling component is an electro-optical modulator.
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1. High-repetition mode-coupled ultra-short pulse laser system for generating pulses, according to the principle of cavity dumping, comprising:
an amplifying laser medium;
a laser resonator with at least one resonator mirror and at least one cavity dumping component;
a saturable absorber mirror; and
a pump source for pumping the laser medium;
wherein the cavity dumping component is an electro-optical modulator and the laser system is configured to generate femtosecond or picosecond pulses with a repetition rate of greater than 10 kHz and a peak pulse power greater than 100 kW.
2. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
3. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
4. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
5. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
6. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
7. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
8. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
9. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
10. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
11. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
12. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
13. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
14. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
15. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
16. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
17. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
18. A method of processing a material, comprising:
providing a material to be processed by plasma generation, and
processing the material using the high-repetition mode-coupled ultra-short pulse laser system according to
19. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
20. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
21. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
22. The ultra-short pulse laser system according to
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The invention relates to high-repetition laser system for generation ultra-short pulses according to the principle of pulse decoupling according to the precharacterizing clause of Claim 1 and a use of the laser system.
Known ultra-short pulse laser systems are used in a large number of applications, such as, for example, material processing, microscopy, biomedicine or the production of photonic components. However, use outside a laboratory is often problematic since the laser systems necessitate considerable complexity and a major handling effort. In addition to the high energy of the femtosecond pulses, in particular the compactness of the laser systems plays an important role for industrial use.
Laser arrangements according to the principle of pulse decoupling or of the cavity dumper permit the generation of pulses which have energies and peak pulse powers required for use in the area of microstructuring. It is possible thereby to dispense with the use of complex amplifier arrangements, which leads to a compact design.
A laser system according to the principle of pulse decoupling or the cavity dumper having pulse energies of up to 100 nJ is known, for example, from M. Ramaswamy, M. Ulman, J. Paye, J. G. Fujimoto, “Cavity-dumped femtosecond Kerr-lens mode-locked Ti:Al2O3 laser”, Optics Letters, vol. 18, no. 21, 1 Nov. 1993, pages 1822 to 1824. This document is hereby incorporated by reference into this Application. A mode-coupled Ti:Al2O3 laser is operated for generating 50 femtosecond pulses having an energy of 100 nJ or peak pulse powers of 0.1 MW and an adjustable rate up to 950 kHz with an acousto-optical switch as a cavity dumper. The switch itself consists of a quartz cell onto which the laser beam is focused by means of a mirror at the Brewster angle. An argon laser is used for pumping and a downstream zone having 4 prisms is used for dispersion compensation.
A. Baltu{hacek over (s)}ka, Z. Wie, M. S. Pshenichniko, D. A. Wiersma, Robert Szipöcs, “All-solid-state cavity-dumped sub-5-fs laser”, Appl. Phys. B 65, 1997, pages 175 to 188, describe a solid-state laser system by means of which laser pulses having a duration of less than 5 femtoseconds are generated according to the principle of the cavity dumper. This document is hereby incorporated by reference into this Application. The Ti-sapphire laser medium used is pumped by a frequency-doubled solid-state laser which is once again diode-pumped and has Nd:YVO4 as a laser medium. The formation as a cavity dumper is effected by means of a Bragg cell as an acousto-optical switch. This arrangement requires careful design of the cavity so that mode coupling by the Kerr lens effect is not disturbed by the dispersion of the acousto-optical modulator. A possible use of electro-optical modulators is mentioned, but their limitation to achievable repetition rates of about 10 kHz is emphasized. With the laser system described, it is intended to realize sub-5-fs pulses having a peak pulse power of 2 megawatt and a repetition rate of 1 MHz.
A high-repetition laser with cavity dumping and an electro-optical switch is described by D. Krüger in “High-repetition-rate electro-optic cavity dumping”, Rev. Sci. Instrum. 66 (2), February 1995, pages 961 to 967. This document is hereby incorporated by reference into this Application. A mode-coupled dye laser synchronously pumped by an argon laser serves as a basis of the arrangement, an LM 20 Pockels cell comprising two deuterated KD*P crystals with a thin-film polarizer being used as the switch. The laser medium consists of a solution of Rhodamine 6G in ethylene glycol. The pulses generated have a duration of 15 nanoseconds at an average decoupled power of 75 mW and a repetition rate of 10 MHz.
A laser according to the cavity dumper principle with electro-optical switch is described by V. Kubecek, J. Biegert, J.-C. Diels, M. R. Kokta, “Practical source of 50 ps pulses using a flashlamp pumped Nd:YAG laser and passive all-solid-state pulse control”, Optics Communications 177 (2000), pages 317 to 321. This document is hereby incorporated by reference into this Application. An Nd:YAG laser medium is pumped by a flashlamp. The electro-optical switch used is a Pockels cell with a dielectric polarizer. The achievable energies of the 50 picosecond pulses are stated as 300 μJ at repetition rates of 5 Hz, compression of individual pulses within the cavity being effected.
Ti:Al2O3 lasers therefore surpass the dye lasers in the achievable peak pulse powers. However, the achievable pulse energy is limited by the use of the acousto-optical modulators since the effect of self-phase modulation is too high for these owing to the required small focuses, which can result in pulse instability or destruction of the modulator material. Moreover, in the case of dye lasers, there is a time-related degradation of the laser medium and pumping by flashlamps or solid-state lasers leads to complex systems.
Generic laser systems of the prior art are therefore too complex owing to their design and the components used and/or are limited in the achievable pulse energy or do not achieve pulse durations in the femtosecond range.
An object of the present invention is to provide a compact laser system, in particular a diode-pumped laser system according to the principle of pulse decoupling, which generates ultra-short pulses having a repetition rate greater than 10 kHz and pulse energies above 100 nJ.
A further object is to provide a compact laser system, in particular without element for pulse amplification outside the cavity, having a peak pulse power greater than 100 kW at a repetition frequency greater than 10 kHz.
These objects are achieved or the solutions are further developed by the subject matter of Claim 1 or of the dependent Claims, respectively.
The invention relates to a high-repetition laser system according to the principle of pulse decoupling, in which a diode-pumped pico- or femtosecond oscillator is operated with an electro-optical modulator as a switch.
An advantage of the EOM in comparison with the AOM is that the EOM can be operated with very large beam cross-sections (e.g. d=700 μm) so that higher energies are possible. To avoid excessive self-phase modulation (SPM) or even destruction at the pulse powers or pulse energies to be generated in the switch. An SiO2-AOM on the other hand typically requires d<50 μm at a modulator length of 3 mm in order to achieve the same shortness of the switching flank. It is true that it is possible to obtain longer modulator cells in which the focussing can be kept larger. However, owing to the increase in the interaction length, the accumulated non-linear phase does not decrease markedly. In addition—in order to achieve switching efficiencies comparable with the EOM method—the AOM must be operated in the Michelson configuration which means a comparatively complex resonator design.
If it was intended, for example, to generate femtosecond pulses having 1 μJ energy and 200 fs pulse width at the exit of the pulse decoupler, a pulse energy of 2 μJ would typically have to be present within the cavity. This requirement results from the necessity for operating the cavity-dumped laser in a quasi-stationary manner, which is difficult to achieve at high repetition rates and degrees of decoupling of >50%. At said cross-sections and powers in the AOM, owing to the soliton condition
where
a 200 fs soliton could be stabilized at 1 μm wavelength only if the high negative net dispersion of about −40 000 fs2 were to be introduced into the resonator. Here,
In addition, problems still remain when such a dispersion is present since, in a single pass, an excessively high chirp forms and the pulse parameters change too greatly during a resonator cycle. The result of this is that stationary soliton operation is not possible and as a rule dispersive radiation forms in the resonator and then leads to multiple pulses or dynamic instability. For example, the ratio r of the resonator period and the soliton period can be defined as a measure of an inclination of the laser in this respect.
For stable operation, this ratio should be <<1. In the above case the value would be about 3, which is clearly too high. In the generation of femtosecond pulses, it is therefore advantageous to choose the r parameter to be less than 1, in particular less than 0.25 or even less than 0.1. The basis of this calculation is described by F. Krausz, M. E. Fermann, T. Brabec, P. F. Curly, M. Hofer, M. H. Ober, C. Spielman, E. Wintner and A. J. Schmidt “Femtosecond Solid-State Lasers” in IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, vol. 28, no. 10, pages 2097-2120, October 1992. This document is hereby incorporated by reference into this Application.
For a femtosecond laser system according to the principle of pulse decoupling, the pulse energy is therefore more easily scalable with an EOM than with an AOM.
For typical modulator materials (e.g. BBO) and modulator lengths, the dispersion generated by the EOM can be relatively easily compensated by a sequence of dispersive components, e.g. mirrors, in the cavity. The number of dispersive mirrors is determined by the positive dispersion to be compensated in the cavity, to which all mirrors, the laser medium, the thin-film polarizer and the BBO EOM contribute with a principal proportion and by the soliton condition. The latter states that, for a certain cyclic pulse energy, a parameter of the self-phase modulation and a pulse width to be achieved, a certain negative net dispersion must prevail in the cavity. Owing to the large beam cross-sections which are possible in the case of the EOM switch, the parameter κ of the self-phase modulation is determined only by the beam cross-section in the laser medium and the non-linear refractive index n2 thereof.
For dispersion compensation, it is possible to use dispersive mirrors, e.g. Gires-Tournois interferometers, which thus serve for compensating the positive dispersion in the cavity and for fulfilling the soliton condition.
With such a design of a laser system according to the principle of pulse decoupling, femtosecond pulses having a repetition frequency of up to 1 MHz and a pulse energy of 500 nJ and therefore more than 1 MW power were generated. The laser system is operated in a mode-coupled manner with the use of the dispersive mirrors and of a saturable absorber mirror.
Owing to the achievable radiation characteristic, a laser system according to the invention also permits use for direct, i.e. amplifier-free material processing. Here, a plasma which is used for processing is generated by the radiation field in direct contact with the material.
A working example of a laser system according to the invention is shown schematically below and described in more detail purely by way of example. Specifically,
In the cavity, a pulse builds up from the noise or from a radiation field remaining from a preceding pulse and is amplified at each pass by the laser medium 11, multiple reflection at the dispersive mirrors 6c-d, 7a-g, 8a-i taking place. After a certain number of resonator cycles and passes through the amplifying laser medium 11, the pulse is decoupled by rotation of the polarization by means of switching of the electro-optical element 1 via the thin-film polarizer 4 as a laser pulse. This arrangement represents only one working example for a laser arrangement according to the principle of pulse decoupling.
The individual components of the laser arrangement in
A further suitable component for an electro-optical modulator is, for example, a cell comprising RTiOPO4 or rubidium titanyl phosphate (RTP). Owing to the thermal drift effects which occur, readjustment or regulation in this respect is advantageous.
In contrast to the femtosecond laser system of
On generation of picosecond pulses, it is advantageous for stability reasons to choose the nonlinear phase to be less than 100 mrad, in particular less than 10 mrad, the nonlinear phase being calculated per resonator cycle and per 1% modulation depth of the saturable absorber mirror. The effect of self-phase modulation on the stability of a picosecond laser is described, for example, in R. Paschotta, U. Keller, “Passive mode locking with slow saturable absorbers”, Appl. Phys. B73, pages 653-662, 2001. By choosing a correspondingly large mode diameter on the electro-optical modulator and in the laser medium, it is possible to keep the non linear phase sufficiently small.
As an alternative to the arrangements of
The pulse evolution after decoupling and hence outside the cavity is shown for this example in
Of course, the laser systems or laser arrangement shown represent only working examples for many embodiments which can be realized according to the invention and the person skilled in the art can derive alternative forms for realising the laser design, for example with the use of other resonator arrangements, resonator components or pumping methods, such as, for example, thin-disc lasers. In particular, it is possible to design the switching and/or control elements differently from the stated examples, for example by using alternative dispersive components, laser media or other electro-optical elements which also make it possible to realize higher repetition rates.
Kopf, Daniel, Morgner, Uwe, Lederer, Maximilian Josef
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