Double-pass copper vapor laser master-oscillator power-amplifier systems: Generation of flat-top focused beams for fiber coupling and percussion drilling

被引：40
作者：
Coutts, DW [1 ]
机构：
[1] Univ Oxford, Clarendon Lab, Dept Atom & Laser Phys, Oxford OX1 3PU, England
来源：
IEEE JOURNAL OF QUANTUM ELECTRONICS | 2002年 / 38卷 / 09期
基金：
澳大利亚研究理事会; 英国工程与自然科学研究理事会;
关键词：
gas lasers; laser amplifiers; laser beams; laser materials-processing applications; micromachining; optical fiber coupling; optical pulse amplifiers;
D O I：
10.1109/JQE.2002.802447
中图分类号：
TM [电工技术]; TN [电子技术、通信技术];
学科分类号：
0808 ; 0809 ;
摘要：
In this paper, a compact master-oscillator power-amplifier laser system incorporating telescopic beam expansion in a high-gain double-pass amplifier is presented. A miniature (0.5 W) master-oscillator copper vapor laser is used to efficiently extract over 37 W of high-beam-quality (full transverse coherence) output power from a kinetically enhanced nominally 35-W copper vapor laser at 12-kHz pulse repetition frequency. By configuring the oscillator for low coherence output and using a multimode optical fiber between the oscillator and the double-pass amplifier, a high-power (34 W) low-divergence output beam having a well-defined flat-top far-field beam profile was also produced. The flat-top far-field beam profile arises from control of the spatial coherence of a flat-top near-field beam, rather than the usual techniques for producing flattened Gaussian beams from coherent Gaussian beams. Use of the flat-top focused beam for high-speed percussion drilling of high quality 100-mum diameter holes in metals was demonstrated, as well as high-power (34-W average power, 80-kW peak power) damage-free power transmission through 100-mum core diameter step-index optical fibers.
引用
收藏
页码：1217 / 1224
页数：8
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