Table of Contents
Overview of the self-cooling fiber laser
The researchers from the UK produced a self-cooling fiber laser. This fiber laser is based on a silica fiber laser design. The scientists are going to create fiber laser-based devices that could achieve exceptional purity and frequency stability. That will allow avoiding the necessity of external cooling, for example, using a water-based cooling system. A self-cooling fiber laser with a silica fiber laser module can be applied for the development of progressive fiber laser systems. These fiber laser systems are useful for low-power, high-precision metrology and information transportation.
Mechanism of self-cooling
The cooling was successfully achieved when the researchers decreased the energy level of the light. The tests’ results demonstrate that the silica fiber laser module gets colder upon light excitation. The scientists also used anti-Stokes fluorescence to achieve cooling. This means the addition of a rare-earth ion to the fiber laser module. The ion absorbs the light from the laser beam and then produces it at a higher energy level. As a result, the fiber laser module temperature is getting lower. The process is a complicated task because of the ytterbium that is usually taken during the test. Ytterbium ions can take in impurity and release heat energy. This process is called “concentration quenching”. The researchers created a glass composition with the necessary quantity of ytterbium for the experiment to avoid this effect. The light frequency and its power were more stable because there were no changes in the temperature of the self-cooling of the fiber laser design. That helped to preserve the cooling effect.
Testing results and potential applications
The tests prove that the fiber laser system is capable of supporting high-power and large-scale laser applications in terms of increasing performance efficiency. There were also developed two additional silica fiber laser applications. The scientists intensified the laser beam at the same time, preserving the negative average temperature change.
Future improvements
According to the researchers who developed these constructions, there is still a lot to improve in the future. The extraction percentage, as well as the level of efficiency, is at a low level. That’s why this newly developed technology can’t be implemented and needs some time for adoption for high-power laser applications.