Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference:	GR/R94084/01
Title:	Kilowatt power-scaling concept for cladding-pumped fibre lasers
Principal Investigator:	Clarkson, Professor WA
Other Investigators:	Nilsson, Professor LJA Richardson, Professor DJ Hanna, Professor DC
Researcher Co-Investigators:	Dr R Williams
Project Partners:	Spectron Laser Systems Ltd
Department:	Optoelectronics Research Ctr (closed)
Organisation:	University of Southampton
Scheme:	Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts:	01 June 2003	Ends:	30 September 2004	Value (£):	307,110
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:	Lasers & Optics
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:	Manufacturing
Related Grants:
Panel History:
Summary on Grant Application Form
This project will investigate a new approach for scaling of single-mode output power from fibre lasers using a novel cladding-pumped fibre design. The new design will employ a high aspect ratio rectangular inner-cladding to facilitate removal of waste heat and for compatibility with efficient in-coupling of high pump power from diode-bar-stacks, and in addition, will contain multiple rare earth ion doped cores arranged in a linear array. The latter feature allows the effective core area and hence the power damage threshold to be increased significantly compared to a conventional single-core fibre. The proposed research will involve the fabrication and characterisation of neodymium and ytterbium-doped ribbon fibres and the construction of high power laser devices based on these fibres. The development of appropriate pump beam conditioning and launch optics will be an important part of the work programme. In addition, the use of an external cavity containing a diffraction grating to select different operating wavelengths for the cores (within the lasing gain bandwidth) and automatically combine the beams into a single diffraction-limited beam will be explored. Power levels well in excess of 100W should be achievable in this preliminary study, which will be a significant advance for fibre lasers and, in terms of brightness, is competitive with state-of-the-art 'bulk' solid-state lasers. However, our main ambition is to show that our approach is scalable to >kilowatt average power levels.
Key Findings
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Organisation Website:	http://www.soton.ac.uk