All Fiber-based automatic pulse shaper for efficient energy scaling of ultrashort 2 micron fiber laser pulses Navy SBIR FY2010.3 Sol No.: Navy SBIR FY2010.3 Topic No.: N103-211 Topic Title: All Fiber-based automatic pulse shaper for efficient energy scaling of ultrashort 2 micron fiber laser pulses Proposal No.: N103-211-0215 Firm: NP Photonics, Inc. UA Science and Technology Park 9030 S. Rita Road, Suite #120 Tucson, Arizona 85747-9108 Contact: Wei Shi Phone: (520) 799-7413 Web Site: www.npphotonics.com Abstract: NP Photonics proposes to develop an all fiber-based automatic pulse shaper with an adaptive control loop by integrating 2 micron MUX/DEMUX and phase modulator array based on commercial fiber-pigtailed components at 2 micron (phase modulator, circulator, and FBG). This project will be leveraged upon NP's mode-locked fiber lasers at 2 micron, proprietary high Tm-doped germanate fibers with large core and high unit gain, short cascade fiber amplifier technique, and feedback loop control and algorithms. The proposed new pulse shaper features compact, stable, wide transmission window and high spectral resolution, which can efficiently and accurately pre-compensate the large amount of nonlinear phase (or B-integral) in the chirped pulse amplifier (CPA) system, resulting an all fiber-based, compact, environmentally stable USP source at eye-safe wavelength of 2 micron with mJ-level pulse energy for applications of interest to the US Navy, such as directed energy weapons, ECM, and LADAR. Based on the demonstration of the feasibility for the proposed pulse shaper in Phase I period, we will implement a 20-channel single-chip integrated pulse shaper in Phase II. Benefits: Currently, the pulse energy scaling for fiber lasers has been limited by the temporal distortion due to the high order dispersion in the chirped pulse amplification (CPA). The proposed monolithic automatic pulse shaper breaks this limit by enabling the manipulation of ultrashort pulses both in time and phase to avoid nonlinearities during amplification. The temporal control of the output pulse enables the delivery of a specific pulse shape or sequence burst of pulses directly to a work piece through fiber. This is a key requirement in diverse applications areas including metal hole drilling for efficient fuel injectors, delicate scribing and minimal material removal of next generation thin-film photovoltaics, micromachining of advanced 3D semiconductor architectures, maritime and aviation systems, medical, and homeland defense. Return