The invention relates to a supercontinuum light source comprising a microstructured optical fiber and a pump light source. The microstructured optical fiber comprises a core and a cladding region surrounding the core, as well as a first fiber length section, a second fiber length section and an intermediate fiber length section between said first and second fiber length sections. The first fiber length section comprises a core with a first characteristic core diameter. The second fiber length section comprises a core with a second characteristic core diameter, smaller than said first characteristic core diameter, where said second characteristic core diameter is substantially constant along said second fiber length section. The intermediate length section of the optical fiber comprises a core which is tapered from said first characteristic core diameter to said second characteristic core diameter over a tapered length.

A low-repetition-rate (10-Hz), picosecond (ps) optical parametric generator (OPG) system produces higher energy output levels in a more robust and reliable system than previously available. A picosecond OPG stage is seeded at an idler wavelength with a high-power diode laser and its output at ˜566 nm is amplified in a pulsed dye amplifier (PDA) stage having two dye cells, resulting in signal enhancement by more than three orders of magnitude. The nearly transform-limited beam at ˜566 nm has a pulse width of ˜170 ps with an overall output of ˜2.3 mJ/pulse. A spatial filter between the OPG and PDA stages and a pinhole between the two dye cells improve high output beam quality and enhances coarse and fine wavelength tuning capability.

A laser system may include a seed laser formed from a Ti:Sapphire laser providing pulsed light and an optical parametric amplifier to generate pulsed light within a Holmium emission spectrum as seed pulses in response to the pulsed light from the Ti:Sapphire laser. A laser system may further include an amplifier to generate amplified pulses of light in response to the seed pulses from the seed laser, where the amplified pulses include at least some of the seed pulses amplified by the one or more Holmium-doped gain media pumped by the one or more pump lasers. The amplifier may include one or more Holmium-doped gain media and one or more pump lasers providing continuous-wave pump light within an absorption spectrum of the one or more Holmium-doped gain media.

The invention is related to a parametric light generation method and its application and belongs to the technical field of laser and nonlinear optics. The generation method comprises steps as follows: a nonlinear optical material that meets the sum-frequency phase-matched conditions, namely it shall satisfy the energy conservation condition ω.sub.p+ω.sub.i=ω.sub.s and the momentum conservation condition n.sub.pω.sub.p+n.sub.iω.sub.i=n.sub.sω.sub.s simultaneously, is provided; laser light with a wavelength of λ.sub.p is injected into the said nonlinear optical material as pump light; then, the material will output signal light with a wavelength of λ.sub.S, namely the tunable sum-frequency parametric light. With sum-frequency as the basic principle, the invention can realize frequency up-conversion and obtain visible and UV light sources through simple infrared light sources easily.

A laser source includes a first laser device configured to generate a first laser beam having a first wavelength, a second laser device configured to generate a second laser beam having a second wavelength, which is different from the first wavelength, and a non-linear crystal configured to receive simultaneously the first and second laser beams and to generate a third laser beam that has a third wavelength, which is larger than each of the first and second wavelengths. The non-linear crystal has a length and a width, and a variable poling period is distributed across the width so that the third wavelength varies within a given wavelength range based on an incident position of the first and second laser beams along the width of the non-linear crystal.

To provide a laser processing machine, a processing method, and a laser light source that are capable of miniaturization. The laser processing machine includes a laser light source and an optical system. The laser light source includes a light emitting body including a substrate and a bottom emission type vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser element that is provided on one surface of the substrate and emits an excitation light beam from another surface side of the substrate, and a cavity that is disposed in contact with the light emitting body on the other surface side of the substrate and oscillates a pulsed laser beam by incidence of the excitation light beam. The optical system causes the pulsed laser beam to contract and applies the pulsed laser beam to a workpiece.

A laser light-source apparatus includes a seed light source 10, fiber amplifiers 20 and 30 and a solid state amplifier 50 configured to amplify pulse light output from the seed light source, nonlinear optical elements 60 and 70 configured to perform wavelength conversion on the pulse light output from the solid state amplifier 50 and output the resultant pulse light, a semiconductor optical amplifier 15 disposed between the seed light source 10 and the solid state amplifier 50 and configured to amplify the pulse light output from the seed light source 10, and a control unit 100 configured to execute gain switching control processing in which the seed light source 10 is driven at a desired pulse rate, and semiconductor optical amplifier control processing in which an injection current to the semiconductor optical amplifier 15 is controlled depending on the pulse rate of the seed light source 10, and thus, generation of a giant pulse can be reliably prevented, regardless of the pulse rate of the seed light source.

The present disclosure relates to a broadband optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier insensitive to temperature comprises the first pulsed laser, the second pulsed laser, a pulse stretcher and a periodically poled nonlinear crystal. Via the proper arrangement of the non-collinear angles between the transmission directions of the signal light, the pump light and the idler light, to simultaneously satisfy the angular relationship required for constructing the non-collinear phase-matching configuration insensitive to wavelength and that required for constructing the non-collinear phase-matching configuration insensitive to temperature, the optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier not only can realize a broadband parametric amplification of the signal light (insensitive to wavelength), but also can effectively alleviate the phase mismatch in nonlinear crystal resulted from the excessively high local temperature (insensitive to temperature).

This invention provides a device for improving laser wavelength conversion efficiency and a laser system configured to provide high-power multi-wavelength femtosecond laser pulses using the device. The device for improving laser wavelength conversion efficiency comprises a wavelength conversion member photonic crystal fiber (PCF), wherein the device for improving laser wavelength conversion efficiency improves wavelength conversion efficiency by shortening the length of the PCF. The device provided in this invention not only reduces the attenuation and dispersion caused by the optical fiber, but also improves the energy conversion efficiency within a specific wavelength range. The use of the technique not only increases the energy of light pulse, but also greatly reduces the amount of fiber used, and can maximize the energy of the desired wavelength according to experimental requirements when using laser input sources of different wavelengths.

The present disclosure provides an apparatus for generating fiber delivered laser-induced dynamically controlled white light emission. The apparatus includes a laser diode unit for generating a laser electromagnetic radiation with a blue emission in a range from 395 nm to 490 nm that is delivered by an optical fiber. The apparatus further includes a dynamic phosphor unit configured to receive the laser exited from the optical fiber and controllably deflect a beam focused by a first optics sub-unit to a surface spot on a phosphor plate to produce a white light emission. Additionally, and the dynamic phosphor unit includes a second optics sub-unit configured to collect the white light emission and to project to a far field. Furthermore, the apparatus includes an electronics control unit comprising a laser diode driver and a MEMS driver for respectively control the laser diode unit and the dynamic phosphor unit in mutually synchronized manner.