Southampton Photonics Demos 600 W from Fiber Laser

MUNICH, Germany, June 23 -- Southampton Photonics Inc. (SPI) and the Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton, England, have demonstrated over 600 W from a single fiber laser. The team said these are the highest powers reported to date with a single fiber gain module, and that it demonstrates cladding-pumped fiber lasers can produce the high powers needed to compete with more traditional laser technology, in applications such as remote welding, by offering high powers that preserve beam quality. The results were presented by SPI at the The European Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics and the European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe—EQEC 2003), being held this week in Munich.

The team, led by Johan Nilsson, produced over 600 W output power at 1090 nm from a ytterbium-doped fiber laser. According to SPI, single fiber, single-mode output powers well in excess of a kilowatt will be achieved in the not-too-distant future. These lasers can then be combined to produce multikilowatt solutions with excellent beam quality, efficiency and reliability, SPI said. The work was funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under its high-power fiber laser program.

David Parker, SPI's CEO, said, "This result is another example of how SPI is developing scaleable fiber laser designs and architectures, from the 100-W fiber laser products that we are offering today to the kilowatt fiber lasers we will be delivering in the near future. These fiber lasers reflect SPI's execution to our roadmap of delivering advanced, manufacturable fiber laser technology to our OEMs."

Southampton Photonics is based in Southampton; its US office is in Los Gatos, Calif. For more information, visit: www.spioptics.com