Method and system for a laser welding process employing the use of a single pulsed fiber laser source configured to generate a radiative output with a wavelength spectrum extending from about 1.8 microns to about 2.6 microns. In a specific case, the laser output from the single pulsed fiber laser source is focused onto the interface of the two pieces of materials at least one of which includes any of glasses, inorganic crystals, and semiconductors.

High-power, highly efficient 3-level system fiber lasers are described. The lasers can operate at an average power of about 50W or greater with an efficiency of about 60% or greater with low diffraction limited mode quality. The lasers incorporate an all-solid photonic bandgap fiber that includes a large core (20 micrometers or greater), a high core/clad ratio (greater than 15%), and a waveguide cladding designed to define a transmission band to suppress the 4-level system of the gain medium through determination of the node size of individual nodes of a cladding lattice.

A Raman fiber laser source (RFLS) is configured with a feeding fiber delivering MM pump radiation to an inner cladding of double-clad MM Raman fiber laser. The MM pump radiation has a sufficient power to produce Raman scattering in the MM Raman fiber converting the pump radiation to a MM signal radiation at a Raman-shifted wavelength ram which is longer than a wavelength pump of the pump radiation. The RFLS further has a pair of spaced reflectors defining therebetween a resonator for the signal radiation at a 1.sup.st Stokes wavelength and flanking at least part of the MM core of the Raman fiber which is provided with a central core region which is doped with impurities for enhancing Raman process. The reflectors and central core region are dimensioned to correspond to the fundamental mode of the MM signal radiation.

Incoherently combining light from different lasers while maintaining high brightness is challenging using conventional fiber bundling techniques, where fibers from different lasers are bundled adjacently in a tight-packed arrangement. The brightness can be increased by tapering the tips of the bundled fibers to match a single, multi-mode output fiber, e.g., one whose core that is just wide enough to fit the input cores. This increases the brightness of the beam combining. In addition, reducing the outer diameters of the signal fiber claddings allows the signal fibers to be bundled closer together, making it possible to couple more signal fiber cores to the core of a multi-mode output fiber. Similarly, reducing the outer diameter of the pump fiber cladding and/or etching away corresponding portions of the signal fiber cladding in a pump/signal combiner makes it possible to couple more pump light into the signal fiber cladding, again increasing brightness.

Good femtosecond fiber laser performance is achieved by producing picosecond Raman shifted pulses of sufficient intensity to undergo self-phase modulation (SPM), thus causing the pulses to advantageously spread spectrally, which then makes it possible to temporally compress the pulses with an optical compressor to produce femtosecond pulses with high peak power.

A movable system includes a movable platform that includes a motorized drive to cause the movable platform to move in position, and a compartment located in an interior part of the movable platform; and an LIDAR system mounted to the movable platform including a probe fiber laser module located on the movable platform and producing pulsed probe laser light and scan the pulsed probe laser light out for optically sensing presence of one or more objects in the surrounding area based on detection of reflected probe laser light from the one or more objects. The probe fiber laser module includes a base laser module located inside the enclosure of the compartment and remote laser modules distributed at the platform instrument holding portions to scan the pulsed probe laser light out for optically sensing presence of one or more objects in the surrounding area.

Disclosed is a laser system that incudes a chirped fiber oscillator, a laser amplifier, and a compressor. The laser amplifier includes a laser Faraday isolator. The fiber oscillator output is directly coupled to the laser Faraday isolator.

A fiber-based optical amplifier for operation at an eye-safe input signal wavelength .sub.S within the 2 m region is formed to include a section of Holmium (Ho)-doped optical gain fiber. The pump source for the fiber amplifier is particularly configured to provide pump light at a wavelength where the absorption coefficient of the Ho-doped optical gain fiber exceeds its gain coefficient (referred to as an absorption-dominant pump wavelength), and is typically within the range of 1800-1900 nm. The selection of an absorption-dominant pump wavelength limits the spontaneous emission of the pump from affecting the amount of gain achieved at the higher wavelength end of the operating region. The amount of crosstalk between the signal wavelength and pump wavelength is also reduced (in comparison to using the conventional 1940 nm pump wavelength).

A movable system includes a movable platform that includes a motorized drive to cause the movable platform to move in position, and a compartment located in an interior part of the movable platform; and an LIDAR system mounted to the movable platform including a probe fiber laser module located on the movable platform and producing pulsed probe laser light and scan the pulsed probe laser light out for optically sensing presence of one or more objects in the surrounding area based on detection of reflected probe laser light from the one or more objects. The probe fiber laser module includes a base laser module located inside the enclosure of the compartment and remote laser modules distributed at the platform instrument holding portions to scan the pulsed probe laser light out for optically sensing presence of one or more objects in the surrounding area.

An all-fiber configuration system and method for generating temporally coherent supercontinuum pulsed emission are provided. The system includes a sequential structure of all-fiber sections including: a fiber laser seed source to produce a seed pulse with given optical properties; a stretching section including an optical fiber to temporally stretch the seed pulse; an amplification section including an active optical fiber, doped with a rare earth element, to amplify the stretched pulse by progressively stimulating radiation of active ions of the doped active optical fiber; a compressing section to temporally compress the amplified pulse; and a spectrum broadening section including an ANDi microstructured fiber that spectrally broadens the compressed pulse by a nonlinear effect of Self Phase Modulation (SPM) while maintaining the temporal coherence of the pulse.