As laser amplifiers and oscillators continue to see widespread use in all branches of science and engineering, they continue to develop in terms of operating parameters to keep pace with their applications. Importantly, the temporal and spectral characteristics of laser systems must be carefully tailored to match application requirements. This thesis reports advances in the development of laser systems, based upon optical fibre technology, which demonstrate the flexibility of optical fibre and fibre integrated devices to cover a wide range of temporal and spectral characteristics.
First, the principle of spectrally masked phase modulation for short pulse generation is explored. Here, a phase modulator is used to generate a time dependent optical frequency shift, which can be turned into an effective amplitude modulation by the introduction of an optical band pass filter. This method is combined with nonlinear compression techniques based on solitonic propagation in optical fibre to generate optical pulses with duration of a few hundreds of femtoseconds and repetition rates of tens of gigahertz.
Increasing the range of wavelengths over with doped fibre amplifier systems will operate requires the development of laser/amplifier systems based on new active dopants. To this end amplifier systems based upon bismuth activated alumosilicate fibre were evaluated. The amplifier stages were then incorporated into a master oscillator power fibre amplifier (MOPFA) scheme, demonstrating the applicability of bismuth doped silica fibre to advanced laser configurations.
Finally, the development of a novel laser source for use in fluorescent microscopy is detailed. The source was based on a gain switched diode which is amplified in a two stage Raman fibre amplifier system, subsequently frequency doubled in a periodically poled lithium tantalate crystal. Nonlinearity and optical filtering are exploited to re-shape the output pulse's temporal profile.Open Acces
