Product Code: ICAL07_M1205

High Energy, High Repetition Rate Ytterbium Doped Fiber Chirped Pulse Amplifier
Authors:
Yoann Zaouter, Amplitude Systemes; Pessac France
Eric Mottay, Amplitude Systemes; Pessac France
Eric Cormier, Universite Bordeaux 1; Talence France
Presented at ICALEO 2007

There is an extremely rapidly growing interest in the development of efficient, compact, reliable high repetition rate ultrafast laser sources with high energy per pulse (in excess of a few µJ) with a very high average power (several tens of watts). We report on a laser source which generates sub-picosecond pulses at a 1MHz repetition rate. A high energy, low repetition rate bulk oscillator is seeded in an Ytterbium doped fiber chirped pulse amplifier in which matched gratings stretcher and compressor chirp and recompress the pulses amplified in Large Mode Area( LMA) Ytterbium doped fibers. The repetition rate is downcounted to 1MHz with an acousto optic modulator. After compression pulses energy in excess of 10µJ were demonstrated with sub-picosecond duration. The use of monomode LMA fibers results in a very high beam quality (M²~1.2) ideal for applications requiring small laser spots. This high repetition rate, high energy ultrafast source is ideally suited for industrial applications such has material structuring, and high precision micro-machining.