Fiber lasers fight greenhouse gases

Fiber lasers fight greenhouse gases A team of researchers from Switzerland has developed a detecting system consisted of conventional fiber lasers and a photonic chip that allows tracking greenhouse and other gases by the application of a mid-infrared light source. The team uses a commercially affordable fiber laser system and combined it with a waveguide chip. That helps surely to emit laser beam lightwaves in the MIR spectrum.

According to the researchers, the developed laser system based on a new MIR laser beam light source enables them to determine greenhouse, other gases, and, moreover, molecules in a person’s breath. The thing is that the used fiber laser produces light in a specific wavelength range.

The operating principle of the fiber laser system is based on the laser beam that “is directed through a waveguide measuring 1 μm (0.001 mm) across and one-half mm in length. The waveguide can alter the frequency of the light as it passes through.” Herewith, several key aspects of the laser system’s design were improved. Among them are the waveguide geometry and material and the wavelength of the original laser beam source.

Thus, the researchers obtain a fiber laser system that is regarded as simple, yet efficient and reliable. Also, it becomes possible to adjust the wavelength of the laser beam light by tuning the geometry of the waveguide. The laser system is considered to be a turnkey, highly efficient, compact MIR laser beam source. It provides power levels sufficient for spectroscopy applications.

The system has been already tested on the detection of acetylene, a colorless and highly flammable gas, by absorption spectroscopy. The thing is that the fiber laser emits laser beam light in the MIR spectrum, saving 30% of the original signal strength. For instance, the waveguides pumped with a 2-μm fs fiber laser succeded a spectroscopic spectral region in the 3- to the 4-μm range, with up to 35% power conversion and mW-level output powers.

The researchers confirm that the developed fiber laser system sets a new benchmark for efficiency. Moreover, it is the first fully-integrated spectroscopic laser beam source resulting in no need for the laborious process of accurately aligning all the components in a standard laser system.

Finally, it was challenging to transport previous IR fiber laser systems for application since they include complex, damage-prone hardware. Modern laser systems can promote the development of additional miniaturized MIR technologies. It has a wavelength range that scientists rarely get to work with. Additionally, now the researchers have the opportunity to see on-chip detectors that is possible to be easily carried out into the field.

Optromix is a fast-growing fiber laser manufacturer and a vendor of optical fiber sensors and optical monitoring systems. The company offers fast turnkey solutions and creates sophisticated fiber laser systems for special purposes. Optromix uses only its technologies and develops a broad variety of fiber lasers. If you have any questions or would like to buy a laser system, please contact us at info@optromix.com

Fiber Lasers and technologies for military use

Fiber Lasers and technologies for military useLaser beam weapons have long ceased to be an element of sci-fi culture, and every year fiber technology more and more firmly takes its place in military application. Of course, high-power laser systems that can cut starships and buildings into parts have not yet been invented, but many modern fiber lasers still deserve special attention. We will talk about them today.

1. Lockheed Martin company is a manufacturer of a combat laser module whose laser beam power can be increased by simply adding new emitters. In April 2014, the company produced and tested a 60-kilowatt fiber laser for military purposes. Herewith, its installation in the future will be part of the combat HEL MD.

2. The American company Boeing produces not only aircraft but also laser beam weapons for detecting missiles. The laser system installed on the Boeing YAL-1 aircraft is considered to be a chemical laser that is capable of destroying missiles and mortar shells at a distance of up to 1.5 km, even in challenging weather conditions.

3. Fiber laser Design Bureau of Precision Engineering named. Nudelman is a weapon designed to deactivate optical devices and manpower of the enemy. The laser system operates as a scanner: the laser beams emitted in a spectrum invisible to the human eye scan a potentially dangerous area. As soon as an enemy optical device enters the field of view of a fiber laser system, it is hit by a laser. It should be noted that such a system can strike not only the optics themselves but often the eyes of the observer.

4. Another creation of Boeing is designed to destroy drones, which have become increasingly popular over the past couple of years. A compact laser module offers the ability to make damage on individual parts of an unmanned module (which can be useful if the enemy device does not need to be destroyed but captured), although it can only be installed on fixed surfaces.

5. The Israeli laser system made by Advanced Defense Systems was created with the aim of hitting artillery shells in flight. It is capable of destroying short-range missiles, mortar mines, and shells using a laser beam. This fiber laser can be used against ammunition at a distance of up to 7 kilometers.

Devices emitting laser beams are used mainly against high-speed shells or optical systems of the enemy. Thus, a laser system is one of the most reliable ways to bring down an enemy rocket or mine while still approaching, which allows negating its damaging effects. However, the use of laser systems as a mass attack weapon is just around the corner – few devices can be compared in strength to powerful emitters, and as soon as humanity can solve the problem of a reliable source of energy that will feed the machines in the field, a new era of military technology will begin.

Optromix is a fast-growing fiber laser manufacturer and a vendor of optical fiber sensors and optical monitoring systems. The company offers fast turnkey solutions and creates sophisticated fiber laser systems for special purposes. Optromix uses only its technologies and develops a broad variety of fiber lasers. If you have any questions or would like to buy a laser system, please contact us at info@optromix.com

Fiber lasers have a fully tunable beam

Fiber Lasers with a tunable beamThe newly developed high-powered fiber laser provides real-time tuning of the laser beam characteristics directly from the output optical fiber using a fiber optic system. Laser systems have become indispensable tools for material processing, production, detection, protection, and scientific applications. 

This success is based on improved laser performance in several areas, including average and peak power, wavelength range, timeline flexibility (pulse duration and frequency, complex signals), efficiency, power stability, long-term reliability, maintenance, and operational requirements costs. 

High-powered fiber lasers were especially important for implementing some of these achievements and currently dominate in many areas of industrial production and microprocessing. In addition to the efficiency and reliability inherent in fiber lasers, fiber laser systems generally provide fiber delivery to the processing head, minimizing the load on the fiber optics in free space in the laser and the machine.

The opportunity to tune a laser beam is important, for example, when cutting metal (the largest industrial application), so a low-power beam with relatively high radiation quality provides the highest speed for thin material, but the maximum thickness is limited by the resulting narrow cut, which prevents melt removal. 

A more powerful and more divergent laser beam (lower beam quality) allows cutting a thicker sheet with a corresponding reduction in speed compared to a thin sheet. During welding with high beam quality laser, welds with a “deep penetration channel” are formed, while larger spots with lower laser beam quality create shallow welds in the heat conduction mode, aesthetic welds on thin parts.

Besides, the specific shape of the beam affects the heat transfer and temperature gradients in the workpiece. Unlike a Gaussian beam, a flat-topped laser beam can prevent over or under processing by providing uniform radiation, and ring beams are known to improve processing quality in some applications.

Most laser systems provide the fixed characteristics of the beam. The laser beam can be converted to a different format using refractive or diffractive fiber optic systems. Fiber laser systems with a fixed beam can operate only in a limited range of processes or materials and thus, suffer from reduced productivity or limits. 

Customizable laser beam characteristics would be highly desirable to ensure process optimization and tool versatility. Various approaches have been developed that provide a certain level of beam tuning, including zoom lenses, switchable diffractive optical elements, deformable mirrors, laser beam combiners, and (for fiber laser systems with a fiber radiation transport system) optical fiber connectors and switches with a motorized optics. 

Optromix is a fast-growing fiber laser manufacturer and a vendor of optical fiber sensors and optical monitoring systems. The company offers fast turnkey solutions and creates sophisticated fiber laser systems for special purposes. Optromix uses only its technologies and develops a broad variety of fiber lasers. If you have any questions or would like to buy a laser system, please  contact us at info@optromix.com

Extreme sound features of fiber laser systems

Fiber Lasers with diamondsDiamond is regarded as a predominantly interesting material for this type of laser system for several main reasons. The thing is that it offers high thermal conductivity that promotes the development of compact fiber laser systems that have such features as high stability and high power. Herewith, such fiber laser has also a much higher level of sound speed compared to other materials. Therefore, new laser systems enable directly synthesize frequencies in the hard-to-reach millimeter-wave band.

A team of researchers demonstrates that the laser beam light-sound interaction is predominantly strong in diamonds, also they develop the first bench-top Brillouin laser system that applies diamonds. It should be noted that the result is awesome, the thing is that the new fiber laser offers a highly practical technique with a greatly increased range of performance. Compared to previous versions, the laser system with a diamond can operate without having to limit the optical or sound waves in a waveguide to increase the interaction. 

To be more precise, it is easier to scale such fiber laser systems in size, they have much greater flexibility for monitoring the laser beam features as well as increasing power. Diamond opens new possibilities to use the unique features of Brillouin laser systems. Additionally, the fiber lasers result in numerous properties containing laser beam generation with ultra-pure and stable output frequency, the creation of new frequencies, and potentially, laser systems with exceptionally high efficiency.

The researchers confirm that the developed laser technology offers a new way to high-powered fiber lasers that are significantly efficient and have unique frequency features, for instance,  low-phase noise and narrow linewidth. Such laser beam features play a crucial role in applications that require the highest standards of noise-free frequency properties, for example, ultra-sensitive detection of gravitational waves or manipulating large arrays of qubits in quantum computers.

Moreover, the diamond in laser systems allows synthesizing very clear frequencies beyond the microwave band. Thus, “as a consequence of the very high speed of sound in diamond—a dashing 18 km/s—the frequency spacing between the input pump laser beam and the laser line is many times higher than in other materials.” It is possible to produce frequencies in the millimeter-wave band (30-300 GHz) employing a technique called photo-mixing. 

Finally, the fiber laser technology quantifies the strength of the light-sound interaction in diamond, a crucial parameter for predicting future design and performance resulting in the creation of a practical tool with over 10 W of laser beam power. Also, it is planned to expand the laser system abilities by offering fiber lasers with higher levels of frequency clarity and laser beam power required to maintain future progress in quantum science, wireless communications, and sensing.

Optromix is a fast-growing fiber laser manufacturer and a vendor of optical fiber sensors and optical monitoring systems. The company offers fast turnkey solutions and creates sophisticated fiber laser systems for special purposes. Optromix uses only its technologies and develops a broad variety of fiber lasers. If you have any questions or would like to buy a laser system, please contact us at info@optromix.com

Fiber lasers provide communication of small satellites

Fiber Lasers for satellitesThe fact is numerous difficulties have to be overcome in linking small satellites via fiber lasers, however, progress is remarkable. The idea of laser system communication is not new and dates back to the birth of fiber lasers. Nevertheless, the first inter-satellite link provided by the fiber laser system has been recently demonstrated between two low-Earth-orbit satellites.

It should be noted that the laser system requires less than 25 seconds on average to lock onto each other and begins transmission in both directions at 5.6 Gbit/s. The fiber technology has been tested: “the two spacecraft were in a line of sight from each other, an average of about 20 minutes during which the laser beam link between them turned about 80°.” 

Herewith, NASA demonstrated the first fiber laser connection in deep space when its laser system device provided data transmission from the Moon at 622 Mbit/s. The laser technology offers a big improvement over data rates real with radio waves. The first commercial laser system inter-satellite link was performed in 2016 resulting in the transmission of high-priority image data collected by four satellites in low-Earth orbit at rates of 1.8 Gbit/s.

To be more precise, the high-speed fiber laser system in the low satellite allows tracking the geosynchronous satellite, that is why it can transmit images quickly, without the necessity to wait to pass over a ground station. Also, its high-speed fiber laser connection enables transmitting images to cloud servers on the ground. Herewith, a totally new vision has appeared for laser system link in space: applying fiber laser-connected satellites in low-Earth orbit to transmit broadband Internet and other services to places beyond the reach of fiber optic cables. 

Hundreds or thousands of small satellites are orbited 300 and 2000 km above the ground, while at least one satellite should be always in the sky above any point being served. Moreover,  these satellites would orbit around the Earth in several rings, located at various altitudes and positions to get rid of collisions. Thus, satellites would be located around each ring so fiber laser system connections would always have access to one or two adjacent satellites.

Finally, links provided by fiber lasers have crucial benefits over radio frequencies for inter-satellite links above the atmosphere, for instance, higher transmission bandwidth, smaller receivers, and tighter laser beams to enhance security. The main difficulty in the optical fiber band remains and includes the requirement to maintain fiber laser links between adjacent satellites as the whole constellation moves through space and the nearest neighbors of each satellite keep changing.

Optromix is a fast-growing fiber laser manufacturer and a vendor of optical fiber sensors and optical monitoring systems. The company offers fast turnkey solutions and creates sophisticated fiber laser systems for special purposes. Optromix uses only its technologies and develops a broad variety of fiber lasers. If you have any questions or would like to buy a laser system, please contact us at info@optromix.com

Fiber lasers stand guard over your eyes

Fiber lasers for eye treatmentA cataract is considered to be one of the most prevalent eye diseases. It should be noted that about one-third of all visual impairments are linked to cataracts. Despite the treatment methods are highly popular, most of them can be traumatizing at times apart from fiber laser technology.

Nowadays researchers continue working on the reduction of the side effects linked to cataract surgery. Therefore, new laser technology based on a fiber laser has been developed to activate the regeneration of adjacent tissue and also to get rid of the clouded-eye lens.

It is not new that the eye is regarded as the most vital organ. It enables seeing in the dark and in the light, trace fast objects and read the fine print. Nevertheless, problems with eyes lead to quick degradation of the eyesight or even its total disappearance.

The fiber laser technology promotes the treatment techniques for cataract and their increase. The treatment technique is based on surgery by laser systems that allow removing the clouded eye lens and replacing it with an artificial one made of plastic or sapphire due to high power laser beam.

Thus, the eye lens is crashed either with ultrasound or a fiber laser system. The operating principle of the fiber laser treatment is based on the application of the laser system where “a special tip is inserted into the anterior chamber of the eye close to the lens, and the laser beam breaks the lens into tiny fragments that are then removed from the eye. An artificial lens is then put in their place.”

Nevertheless, laser technology has some challenges that are the process damages the adjacent tissue, and the regeneration doesn’t always go well. In the past years, several research teams have been trying to reduce the traumatizing impact of cataract surgery, and the application of laser beam radiation to crash the cataract is considered to be promising.

It should be noted that the less powerful laser system not only lights up the surgical field but also triggers the regeneration of the impaired tissue. Therefore, new tests have been conducted in order to determine the best interaction way between the illuminating and the destroying fiber lasers.

Finally, the researchers claimed that the most efficient way is to apply both fiber laser systems concurrently. The fiber laser technology requires extensive work from optical engineers because it is impossible to penetrate the eye with two devices simultaneously due to the laser beam radiation.

The thing is that the simultaneous application of two laser systems is perfect because doctors obtain cells that are damaged however not crashed. The stimulation of their generation at once plays a crucial role. This is because the regeneration takes place in the most favorable conditions.

Optromix is a fast-growing fiber laser manufacturer and a vendor of optical fiber sensors and optical monitoring systems. The company offers fast turnkey solutions and creates sophisticated fiber laser systems for special purposes. Optromix uses only its technologies and develops a broad variety of fiber lasers. If you have any questions or would like to buy a laser system, please contact us at info@optromix.com

Fiber laser of super-pulsed type offers several benefits

Fiber Lasers and their benefits Researchers from the USA apply super pulsed fiber laser to treat stones, herewith, they also discovered several benefits compared with holmium laser system lithotripsy. Nevertheless, further research comparing the two is still required. The super pulsed fiber laser system is considered to be a new lithotripsy platform that differs from the holmium one used for the treatment of kidney stones.

To be more precise, compared to the holmium laser system that used 200-μm to 365-μm optical fibers, the super pulsed fiber laser enables the application of 150-μm core-sized optical fibers. The researchers demonstrate “a comparison of lithotripsy with 242-μm core-sized optical fiber holmium: YAG (AccuMax 200), to the 150-μm core-sized SPTF.”

The thulium fiber laser platform provides a benefit compared to the holmium: it has a compact size and can be plugged into a 120-volt outlet as a standard mobile phone. Another benefit of fiber laser technology includes the absence of noise. Herewith, the super pulsed laser system provides settings that the holmium does not, containing high-frequency settings up to 2400 Hz. Therefore, the fiber laser system allows dusting or fragmenting kidney stones.

The fiber laser technology provides high efficiency in stone treatment due to the high absorption of the laser beam energy by water. “The laser beam energy is emitted at a wavelength of 1,940 nm, which is at the tip of the curve for water absorption. For that reason, it is probably more effective than the holmium laser system.” Also, the small profile of the laser beam generated by the super pulsed fiber laser makes it possible to use smaller optical fibers—as low as 50 μm, based on bench testing while holmium laser systems use fibers greater than 200 μm. 

Consequently, the application of smaller optical fibers ensures three other benefits. The first is smaller fibers provide a better flexion to direct the system inside the kidney easier. Additionally, smaller optical fibers have better irrigation during the procedure with a better visualization. The third benefit includes the delivery of laser beam energy in a smaller area of the stone, producing fragments that are smaller dust-type fragments. Thus, virtually all patients with kidney stones who can be treated with the fiber laser system would benefit from fiber laser technology.

Finally, the super pulsed fiber laser is planned to be applied for a retrograde technique in patients that have larger stones that cannot be exposed to the percutaneous approach for reasons such as other comorbidities because it has the potential to be faster in terms of breaking up the stones.

Optromix is a fast-growing fiber laser manufacturer and a vendor of optical fiber sensors and optical monitoring systems. The company offers fast turnkey solutions and creates sophisticated fiber laser systems for special purposes. Optromix uses only its technologies and develops a broad variety of fiber lasers. If you have any questions or would like to buy a laser system, please contact us at info@optromix.com

The operation of fiber lasers

A fiber laser is a powerful device for the production of single-mode radiation with the highest possible performance and quality characteristics. Fiber optic systems for processing materials occupy about one-fourth of the entire laser market. 

It should be noted that the diameter of the fiber laser system has micro values, so the laser beam allows for cutting out sharp corners and other complex shapes with absolute accuracy, even in a sheet of metal with high hardness and large thickness.

The beam formed by a fiber laser is designed primarily for working with metal surfaces, so the fields of application include automobile, ship and rocket engineering, manufacturing of sea containers and railway cars, machine tool construction, robotics, marking and engraving, and the military-industrial complex.

In addition to metals, the fiber laser is perfect in working with stone, glass, and some types of plastic, so it is also used in those industries that massively use these materials (for example, the advertising industry, some types of construction work, etc.).

The priority in using solid-state equipment (fiber lasers belong to this category) over any other systems is explained by a large number of economic and qualitative advantages, which are the following:

  • positioning accuracy at all speed modes;
  • high power;
  • excellent laser beam quality with minimal transmission loss and small angular divergence;
  • multi-function: laser systems can not only cut, engrave and perforate materials, but also solder or perform welding, and cleaning of surfaces from any type of contamination;
  • compact size, easy transportation;
  • silent operation and almost complete absence of industrial waste.

The fiber laser system consists of two main parts: pump lamps (semiconductor diodes) and fiber optic cable. A light-conducting optical fiber with a core of transparent quartz doped with rare earth elements is inside the cable (this is ytterbium in most machines used in industry). 

At the ends of the central rod, a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) is most often performed. The notched sections have a modified reflectivity and act as resonators, reflecting light propagating along the optical fiber and maintaining the desired wavelength. The laser beam retains its monochrome and other quality characteristics thanks to them.

Optromix is a manufacturer of laser systems, optical fiber sensors, and optical monitoring systems. We develop and manufacture a broad variety of fiber lasers, high-powered fiber lasers, and other types. We offer simple laser products, as well as sophisticated fiber laser systems with unique characteristics, based on the client’s inquiry. 

We manufacture laser modules using our technologies based on the advanced research work and patents of the international R&D team. Laser processes are of high quality, high precision, easily-automated manufacturing solutions that provide repeatability and flexibility. If you have any questions or would like to buy a fiber laser system, please contact us at info@optromix.com

The new vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser system

A team of scientists from the U.S. has demonstrated a new design of a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser system that provides record-fast temporal bandwidth. The developed fiber laser technology is based on the combination of numerous transverse coupled cavities that increases the optical feedback of the fiber laser.

It should be noted that the new laser system plays a crucial role in the production of energy-efficient and high-speed optical interconnects in data centers and supercomputers. To be more precise, vertical-cavity systems are a class of semiconductor laser beam diodes combined with a monolithic resonator that produces laser beam light in a direction perpendicular to the chip surface.

Herewith, this type of fiber laser systems becomes more popular thanks to its advantages such as compact size and high optoelectronic performance. For instance, compact laser systems can be applied as “an optical source in highspeed, short-wavelength communications, and optical data networks.”

Additionally, small fiber lasers find applications in automotive or data communications to detect dense traffic and high-speed transmission. Nevertheless, the current fiber laser system has its speed limitation such as the 3-dB bandwidth. Moreover, such parameters as thermal effects, parasitic resistance, capacitance, and nonlinear gain effects also influence the laser.

The thing is that the direct modulation of this fiber laser system cannot be higher than 30 GHz because of the nonlinear optical amplification phenomenon. Nonetheless, the new fiber laser technology has a revolutionary novel design for lasers. The used multi-feedback technique that unites numerous coupled cavities allows for carefully direct and control of the laser beam. Therefore, the researchers can increase the strength of the feedback and expand the temporal laser beam speed leading to overcoming the current limitations.

The fiber laser technology is novel. Now the direct feedback from each cavity is required to be moderate and then the researchers can direct them accurately via the coupled cavities resulting in more design freedom of laser systems. They also claim that new modulation bandwidth can achieve the 100 GHz range.

Thus, the design of fiber lasers has greatly changed. The novel coupled cavities enable to carefully monitor the feedback to the laser system reached by greatly slowing the laser beam light down. Moreover, now it is possible to produce lasers of various designs for particular applications in both fundamental science and technology due to this technique. The new applications of this fiber laser system include the automotive industry where the laser beam acts as a proximity sensor or the smartphone’s face ID, as well as the use for quantum information processors such as coherent Ising machines.

Optromix is a manufacturer of laser systems, optical fiber sensors, and optical monitoring systems. We develop and manufacture a broad variety of fiber lasers, high-powered fiber lasers, and other types. We offer simple laser products, as well as sophisticated fiber laser systems with unique characteristics, based on the client’s inquiry. 

We manufacture laser modules using our technologies based on the advanced research work and patents of the international R&D team. Laser processes are of high quality, high precision, easily-automated manufacturing solutions that provide repeatability and flexibility. If you have any questions or would like to buy a fiber laser system, please contact us at info@optromix.com

Fiber lasers produce perfect laser beams

A team of researchers from Germany has presented an ultrafast fiber laser system. It allows for producing an average power that is higher than 10× that of standard high-powered lasers. The fiber laser technology enables researchers to change both the speed and efficiency of industrial-scale materials processing.

It should be noted that the developed fiber laser has been already demonstrated at the OSA laser congress. The thing is that there is a combination of 12 laser beam amplifiers in the new laser system. Herewith, these lasers overcome current limitations provoked by laser beam light emission and waste heat.

Additionally, optical fibers used in fiber laser systems show “a laser beam geometry with a high surface-to-volume ratio. They effectively dissipate this heat. Therefore, current high-powered laser systems obtain an average power of 1 kW.” Nevertheless, the power increase leads to a decrease in laser beam quality because of the generated heat load, creating a limit.

Thus, the application of 12 amplifiers makes it possible to develop a laser system that can generate 10.4 kW average power. It is equal to 80 MHz repetition without any distortion or decline of laser beam quality. To be more precise, the fiber laser system has been already tested and test results demonstrate a small heating effect.

Moreover, the researchers claim that the use of more amplifier channels results in laser beam power scaling up to the 100-kW level. The fiber laser’s applications include such extreme fields as laser-driven particle acceleration and space debris removal in addition to material processing.

There are also other applications, for instance, high-speed scanning and ablation cooling. Herewith, the developed fiber laser system is not ideal and still needs improvement. Nowadays the researchers plan to discover new applications at the high-power level and the transfer of the fiber laser technology.

The team of researchers pays careful attention to multicore optical fibers that provide the potential to transmit further superior performance in simpler and compacted laser systems. If you are looking for a compact highly-efficient laser system, the Optromix company is ready to manufacture it. 

Optromix is a manufacturer of laser systems, optical fiber sensors, and optical monitoring systems. We develop and manufacture a broad variety of fiber lasers, high-powered fiber lasers, and other types. The company offers simple laser products, as well as sophisticated fiber laser systems with unique characteristics, based on the client’s inquiry. We manufacture laser modules using our technologies based on the advanced research work and patents of the international R&D team. Laser processes have high quality, high precision, easily-automated manufacturing solutions that provide repeatability and flexibility. If you have any questions or would like to buy a fiber laser system, please contact us at info@optromix.com