Fiber Lasers: Basics, Technology, and Applications

The fiber laser, with its humble beginning in the late 1980s, has undergone tremendous development in the past decade or so, transforming itself from a research curiosity to a major force in modern manufacturing. Today, it is revolutionizing our economy by fundamentally changing the way we mark, machine, and process materials on an industrial scale. The recent development of high-power fiber lasers is also fundamentally shaping a wide range of other areas from physical sciences and medicine to geology and space exploration. In the past few years, the tactical deployment of direct energy weapons based on fiber lasers has become a reality. The development of fiber lasers is rooted in a number of technical areas including optical materials, optical waveguide design, nonlinear optics, optical fiber fabrication, and optical characterization, in addition to optical fiber components, and fiber laser design and architecture. No comprehensive in-depth coverage of such diverse topical areas has appeared in a single book. Many important developments have taken place in the past decade in both academia and industry. This book comprehensively covers the basics, technology and applications of fiber lasers including up-to-date developments in both academia and industry and is aimed to serve as both an introduction and research aid for graduate students, engineers, and scientists who are new to this field and also for veterans in the field.

Properties of Rare-Earth-Doped Fibers.

Cover; Half Title ; Title Page ; Copyright Page ; Table of Contents ; Preface ; About the Authors ; Chapter 1: Introduction; The Adoption of Fiber Lasers ; Historical Developments in Optical Fibers ; Power Scaling of Fiber Lasers ; Conclusion ; References ; Chapter 2: Optical Fiber Waveguide Physics; Overview.

Light Guidance in Optical Fibers Basics of Light Guidance in an Optical Fiber ; Exact Waveguide Solutions ; Weakly Guiding Waveguides ; Transmission Characteristics of Optical Fibers ; Birefringent Optical Fibers ; Mode Coupling in Optical Fibers.

Coupling between Two Co-Propagating Waves Coupling between Two Counter-Propagating Waves ; Thermal Issues ; Concluding Remarks ; References ; Chapter 3: Nonlinear Effects in Optical Fibers; Overview ; Nonlinear Effects in Optical Fibers ; Nonlinear Wave Equation ; Self-Phase Modulation (SPM).

Optical Solitons Modulation Instability ; Four-Wave Mixing ; Nonlinear Self-Focusing ; Stimulated Brillouin Scattering ; Stimulated Raman Scattering ; Transverse Mode Instability ; Conclusions ; References ; Chapter 4: Optical Fibers: Materials and Fabrication; Overview.

Conventional Optical Fiber Fabrication Techniques Outside Vapor Depos…