This thesis presents a hybrid laser with pulse on demand operation for high precision industrial processing.
For high precision materials processing the laser system must produce ultrashort laser pulses and needs to be compatible with polygon or resonant scanners in order to achieve high processing speeds. Additionally, a compact system is required in order to be used in an industrial environment.
Nonlinear optical phenomena are the main cause of problems in such system, as they influence both temporal and spectral pulse shape. To reduce their influence and in the same time ensure a compact design, a hybrid laser was investigated. It is based on a combination of a fiber and solid state amplifier in a MOPA configuration and uses a so called CPA method for ultrashort pulse amplification.
Such systems exhibit additional problems when producing pulses on demand, due to the combination of a fiber and a solid-state amplifier. We solved this problem with wavelength control of the idler pulses, which are used for gain control in pulse on demand operation.
Using the above methods, a hybrid laser capable of pulse on demand operation that can generate ultrashort laser pulses with 500 fs pulse duration and 300 µJ pulse energy, was developed.
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