Study of 2 Micron Laser

Abstract

Over the past decade, fiber lasers have developed in all aspects of laser performance with some significant advantages including excellent heat dissipation, single pass high gain, beam quality, freedom from alignment, compactness, and low maintenance. These advantages lead to different applications in material welding, soldering, marking, cleaning, medicine, research, security, etc. Fiber lasers can work in a vast spectral range from deep UV to IR. The 2 µm region which is in mid IR has drawn tremendous attention for vawrious different applications. For instance, 2 µm lasers have smaller atmospheric scattering, atmospheric distortion and thermal blooming compared to 1 µm lasers, which lead to working more efficiently in light detection and ranging (LIDAR), direct energy laser weapon, sensing systems, and optical communication; 2 µm lasers are good candidates for non-metal material processing applications such as direct cutting, welding, and drilling. Especially, plastics are transparent in 1 µm region, while they have high absorption at 2 µm. The work presented in this thesis, includes demonstration of fiber laser using thulium doped fiber at 1940 nm, fiber laser amplifier operating at the same wavelength and; study of co-doped Tm3+ /Ho3+ fiber laser operating at 2050 nm; investigation of Q-switched fiber laser at 1940 nm using active Q-switching.