Oz Optics Limited

Femtonics Corporation

Gsi Lumonics Corporation

Michael Armstrong

Kenneth O Hill

Omur M Sezerman

Garland Best

Shujie Lin

Dwayne R J Miller

David R Walker

Robert John Dwayne Miller

Yan Liao

R J Miller

Rj Dwayne Miller

Omur Sezerman

The present invention is directed to the creation of optical waveguiding devices from standard optical fibers by the creation of zones of permanently altered refractive index characteristics therein. A high intensity femtosecond laser beam is focused at a predetermined target region in the fiber so as to soften the glass material at the target region. After aligning the focal region with the target region in the fiber there will be relative movement between the focal region and the fiber, which has the effect of sweeping the focal region across the fiber in a predetermined path, so as to create a secondary waveguide path. A portion of the light traveling along the core is removed from the core along the secondary waveguide path such that the device can be utilized as an attenuator, an optical tap, or a polarimeter.

Microstructuring optical wave guide devices with femtosecond optical pulses

The present invention is directed to the creation of optical waveguiding devices from standard optical fibers by the creation of zones of permanently altered refractive index characteristics therein. A high intensity femtosecond laser beam is focused at a predetermined target region in the fiber so as to soften the glass material at the target region. After aligning the focal region with the target region in the fiber there will be relative movement between the focal region and the fiber, which has the effect of sweeping the focal region across the fiber in a predetermined path. The result is a zone within the fiber in which the refractive index characteristics of the fiber have been permanently altered so as to control amplitude, phase, spatial propagation or polarization states of light within the material.

A laser clamping system for a disc laser medium that includes two heat conductive members (one of which is optically transparent) positioned on either side of a disc laser. Pressure is applied to the conductive members to restrain the disc from deforming under pumping conditions to reduce the lensing effect. Thin disc geometry allows the thermal load of laser material to be much closer to the heat conductive members so that heat dissipation is generally more efficient than that of other geometric configurations (e.g. rod or slab). In disc lasers each part of the laser beam experiences the same temperature gradient so that there is no lensing effect caused by radial temperature distribution. It has been discovered that any resulting lensing effect is disc lasers is mainly from the thermo-mechanical deformation of the disc itself. Consequently, a disc laser with clamped boundary conditions using the system as described above reduces the lensing effect and enables scaling laser power to a much higher level compared to unclamped disc laser systems. The clamping system and method of the present invention also improves performance in rod and slab type laser medium geometries.

Laser clamping assembly and method

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Toronto, Canada

Michael Armstrong