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Welcome to the Fiber Lasers and Devices Group

University of Arizona, Wyant College of Optical Sciences.

Our group specializes in the end-to-end process of designing, fabricating, and characterizing specialty optical fibers and developing state-of-the-art fiber lasers and devices. From creating custom glass compositions to fiber drawing, device integration, and performance testing, we aim to push the boundaries of fiber laser technology.

 

Our expertise spans:

  • Advanced optical fiber design and fabrication
  • Micro- and nano-structured optical fibers
  • Single-frequency fiber lasers
  • Direct-transition fiber lasers at unique wavelengths (visible, near-infrared, and mid-infrared)
  • Nonlinear conversion lasers
  • Ultrashort pulse lasers
  • Supercontinuum laser sources
  • Wavelength tunable lasers
  • Fiber Bragg gratings
  • Mid-infrared fiber devices.

Core Areas of Expertise

Glass Fabrication and Characterization

  • Glass Melting: Synthesis of diverse glass types, including silicate, phosphate, germanate, tellurite, bismuth, and chalcogenide glasses.
  • Glass Characterization: Comprehensive analysis of optical, thermal, and mechanical properties, such as absorption, emission, lifetime, refractive index, and durability.

Fiber Fabrication and Characterization

  • Fiber Design and Modeling: Expertise in using tools like FIMMWAVE, COMSOL, and MATLAB for advanced fiber design and modeling.
  • Fiber Fabrication: Production of various fiber types, including step-index, multi-core, photonic crystal fibers (PCFs), hollow-core fibers, and hybrid-core fibers.
  • Fiber Characterization: Rigorous testing for propagation loss, absorption, emission, dispersion, photodarkening, hygroscopicity, mechanical strength, and structural imaging (microscopy and SEM).

Fiber Lasers

  • Laser Development: Construction of lasers using rare-earth-doped fibers in both all-fiber and free-space configurations (linear cavity, ring cavity, continuous-wave, Q-switched, mode-locked).
  • Specialty Lasers: Fiber-pumped solid-state, gas, nonlinear conversion, and ultrafast lasers.
  • Comprehensive Laser Testing: Power output, optical spectrum, bandwidth, phase noise, relative intensity noise (RIN), pulse energy, repetition rate, and pulse width.
  • Applications:
    • Sensors
    • Biomedical imaging
    • Interferometry
    • LiDAR
    • Optical clocks
    • Quantum computing
    • Laser cooling

Fiber Devices

  • Linear Fiber-Optic Components: Couplers, splitters, wavelength-division multiplexers (WDMs), polarizers, Faraday rotators, and combiners.
  • Nonlinear Fiber-Optic Components: Multi-mode interference devices, saturable absorbers, and fiber-optic switches.
  • Fiber-Optic Sensors: Advanced devices for sensing applications.

We invite you to explore our research, collaborate with us, and learn more about our innovations in fiber lasers and devices.