I. What are the characteristics of fiber lasers

1. Fiber lasers are easy to achieve low-pump continuous operation.

2. Fiber lasers are cylindrical structures and are easy to couple with optical fibers to achieve various applications.

3. The radiation wavelength of fiber lasers is determined by the rare earth dopants of the main material and is not controlled by the wavelength of the pump light. Therefore, a short-wavelength laser diode corresponding to the absorption spectrum of rare earth ions can be used as a pump source. Laser output in the infrared band.

4. Fiber lasers are compatible with current fiber devices such as modulators, couplers, polarizers, etc., so they can be made into all-fiber systems.

5. Fiber lasers have a simple structure, small size, simple and reliable operation and maintenance, and do not require complex equipment such as the water cooling structure in semiconductor laser pumped solid laser systems.

6. Compared with lamp-pumped lasers, the power consumption of fiber lasers is only about 1% of that of lamp-pumped laser systems, and the efficiency is more than twice that of semiconductor laser-pumped solid Nd:YAG lasers. < /p>

7. Since optical fibers can only transmit basic spatial modes, the beam quality of fiber lasers is not affected by the operation of laser power. In particular, high-power double-clad fiber lasers have the advantages of high output power and high heat generation. They have the advantages of large dissipation area and good beam quality, and the output laser has a beam quality close to the diffraction limit.

II. What are the advantages and disadvantages of fiber lasers?

1. Advantages of fiber lasers

As a representative of the third generation of laser technology, fiber lasers have the following advantages:

(1) The advantages of miniaturization and intensiveness brought about by the low manufacturing cost of glass fiber, mature technology, and fiber windability.

(2) Glass fiber does not need strict phase matching of the incident pump light like crystals do, because the non-uniform broadening caused by the Stark splitting of the glass matrix causes a wide absorption band. < /p>

(3) Glass material has an extremely low volume-to-area ratio, fast heat dissipation, and low loss, so the conversion efficiency is high and the laser threshold is low.

(4) There are many output laser wavelengths: This is because the energy levels of rare earth ions are very rich and there are many types of rare earth ions.

(5) Tunability: Due to the wide energy levels of rare earth ions, the fluorescence spectrum of glass fiber is wide.

(6) Since there is no optical lens in the resonant cavity of the fiber laser, it has the advantages of no adjustment, no maintenance, and high stability, which is unmatched by traditional lasers.

(7) Fiber output makes the laser easily competent for various multi-dimensional arbitrary space processing applications, making the design of the mechanical system very simple.

(8) It can cope with harsh working environment and has high tolerance to dust, shock, impact, humidity and temperature.

(9) No need for thermoelectric cooling and water cooling, only simple air cooling is needed.

(10) High electro-optical efficiency: The comprehensive electro-optical efficiency is as high as more than 20%, which greatly saves the power consumption in work and saves the operating cost.

(11) The high-power commercial fiber laser is 6 kilowatts.

Disadvantages of fiber lasers

(1) The cost of optical fiber is high.

(2) The fiber material is easy to break.

(3) Because the fiber core is very small. Compared with solid-state lasers, its single pulse energy is very small.