Pulsed laser system
AssigneeAqwest LLC
InventorDavid M. Filgas
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The present invention provides a pulsed laser system capable of producing pulse trains with pulses of substantially same amplitude. The laser system of the present invention uses a master oscillator (MO), pulse stretcher (which may be based on VBG), binary pulse repetition frequency (PRF) multiplier, a booster amplifier (which may be fiber based), a preamplifier (which may be based on planar waveguide—PWG), a multi-pass amplifier (which may be based on a disk amplifier or a regenerative amplifier), and a pulse compressor. The multi-pass amplifier is the critical part of the subject invention.
Claims15
A pulsed solid-state laser system comprising:
- a master oscillator configured to generate laser pulses;
- a burst generator configured to create a burst of pulses with an intra-burst repetition rate higher than the PRF of the master oscillator;
- and
- a multi-pass power amplifier configured to amplify bursts of laser pulses;
- wherein the multi-pass power amplifier is configured with an energy gain per pass sufficiently low, and a number of passes sufficiently high, such that amplifier gain depletion during each amplification pass of a burst of pulses is suitably low so that pulse amplitudes within the burst remain substantially uniform after amplification.
A pulsed solid-state laser system comprising:
- a master oscillator configured to generate laser pulses;
- a pulse stretcher;
- a burst generator configured to create a burst of pulses with an intra-burst repetition rate higher than the PRF of the master oscillator;
- anda multi-pass power amplifier configured to amplify bursts of laser pulses;
- a pulse compressor;
- and
- wherein the multi-pass power amplifier is configured with an energy gain per pass sufficiently low, and a number of passes sufficiently high, such that amplifier gain depletion during each amplification pass of a burst of pulses is suitably low so that pulse amplitudes within the burst remain substantially uniform after amplification.
A pulsed laser system comprising:
- a master oscillator configured to generate laser pulses;
- a burst generator configured to create a burst of pulses with an intra-burst repetition rate higher than the PRF of the master oscillator;
- and
- a multi-pass power amplifier configured to amplify bursts of laser pulses;
- and
- wherein the multi-pass power amplifier is configured with an energy gain per pass of 5-25%, and a number of passes between 4 and 100, such that amplifier gain depletion during each amplification pass of a burst of pulses is suitably low so that pulse amplitudes within the burst remain within 30% of peak value after amplification which is deemed sufficient for material processing, non-linear conversion or ablation applications.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.