AFOSR

LASERS AND OPTICS

15 March 2011

Dr. Howard Schlossberg

Program Manager
AFOSR/RSE
Air Force Office of Scientific Research
Distribution A: Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited. 88ABW-2011-0758
 2011 AFOSR SPRING REVIEW
2301A PORTFOLIO OVERVIEW
NAME: Dr. Howard Schlossberg

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF PORTFOLIO:

RESEARCH IN LASERS, OPTICS, AND THEIR APPLICATIONS

LIST SUB-AREAS IN PORTFOLIO:

- LASERS
- NON-LINEAR OPTICS
- LASER-MATTER INTERACTIONS
- MICRO-SYSTEMS

2
 Portfolio Summary
• High Average Power Solid-State Lasers
• Ceramic Laser Solid-State Materials
• Fiber Lasers
• Thin Disk Semiconductor Lasers
• Novel Concepts
• Modest Power Lasers
• Mid-Infrared Semiconductor Lasers
• Mid-Infrared Fiber Lasers
• Nonlinear Optics
• Nonlinear Frequency Conversion
• Ultrashort Pulses
• Extreme Light
• High Harmonic Generation
• Mid-and Long Wave Frequency Combs
• Micromachining

• Microplasmas
• Plasma transistor
• Plasma chemistry
3
• RF modulation, protection (DARPA)
LASERS

4
 AFOSR Study of 6.1 Opportunities in High
Energy and High Power Lasers

• Ceramic Solid-State Laser Materials

• Spatially Varying Index and Doping Concentration
• Non-Isotropic hosts
• Fiber Lasers
• University Based Fiber Growth Facility
• Ultra-short, Ultra-Intense Pulses
• Matter Interactions, Propagation, X-Ray Beams
• Integrate with HPL JTO Programs
Inputs from Leading Researchers in High Energy
Laser Community
High Energy Solid-State Lasers Today are an Exercise
in Mode Conversion
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 SPRING REVIEW

Ceramic laser gain media offer a number of important

advantages over single crystals:
• Ceramic media can be fabricated with arbitrary shapes and size, whereas single-
crystal growth techniques (e.g. the Czochralski method) set limits on the possible size.
• Ceramics are well suited to produce composite gain media, consisting e.g. of parts
with different doping levels, or even different dopants. It is also possible to include a
saturable absorber section for passive Q switching.
• Spatially varying doping profiles are relatively easily possible. These aspects give
additional freedom in laser design.
• For neodymium-doped and ytterbium-doped YAG ceramics, a significantly higher
doping concentration can be achieved without quenching effects degrading the laser
efficiency.
• Some materials, e.g. yttria (Y2O3), scandia (Sc2O3) and other sesquioxides with their
high melting temperatures, are very difficult to grow into single crystals, and much
easier to obtain in ceramic form, because the sintering temperature can be much
lower than the melting temperature.

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 Ceramic Solid-State Laser Materials
Non-Isotropic hosts

• Yb doped Sr5(PO4)3F (Yb:S-FAP)

– Excellent properties as laser host
– Prototype uniaxial material
• Precursors
• Very high magnetic fields
• Re-crystallization
Precursors
• Produced 10-40 nm crystals
by co-precipitation
• Preliminary densification

Wu – U. Rochester
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 Fiber Laser Arrays
Passive Coherent Beam Combining
• What is the number of lasers that can be coherently combined in a passive cavity?
– What parameters can be adjusted to maximize this number?
• What is the optimum optical architecture for passive beam combining?
• What is the optimal design of an individual fiber laser for passive beam combining?
• What is the role of fiber nonlinearities?
• How can issues such as self-Q-switching be mitigated at exceedingly high laser
powers?

•10 KW Single Mode Lasers

•10-20 Coherently Coupled

Ledger – U. Minnesota
Nilsson – U. Southampton
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 PHOTONIC BANDGAP GAS
LASERS

•Diode-pumped gas laser

•Long interaction length allows small absorption
•Enhanced efficiency possible through V-V collisions
•Large mode area or coherent coupling possible
•Corwin - Kansas State U
• U. New Mexico
•University of Bath 9
 Laser Locking

•Combines coherent and incoherent beam combining

•Ultra-short pulses at high rep-rates Gopinath
•Scalable to high average powers U. Colorado
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 EXTREME LIGHT

DIOCLES LASER UNL

• 30 J in 30 fs (1 pettawatt) every 10 seconds
• 100 TW pulses at 10/sec
New Physical Regime
• Electrons and heavy particles accelerated to relativistic energy in a single cycle
• High quality, high energy electron beams generated
• High quality x-rays, γ-rays by Compton Scattering, FEL interactions
• High quality proton beams for research, medicine, homeland security
Exawatt Lasers being designed (ELI), Zettawatts contemplated
• Breakdown, nonlinear optics of vacuum 11
PLASMA TRANSISTOR

Eden – U. Illinois
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Surface Distributed Bragg Reflector (S-DBR) mid-IR optically
pumped semiconductor lasers (OPSLs) pack high power
into narrow spectral width.
AFOSR sponsored research at AFRL/RDLAS

S-DBR OPSL
~4 nm FWHM
1st order surface
DBR grating
Intensity

λ=2neff Λ

Baseline
~ 48 nm FWHM Fabry-Pérot
cavity OPSL
3520 3540 3560 3580 3600 3620 3640
Wavelength (nm)
6 6
• 1st order surface DBR is etched on portion of optically
V10-41 pumped device surface.
5 Uncoated 5 • When (coupling coefficient * DBR length) > 2, DBR
Output Power (W)

80 K Fabry-Pérot
4 32 µs pulse 4 mirror enhances longitudinal modes within band.
1% • Power is efficiently transferred to modes within narrow
3 3
S-DBR spectral range.
2 2 • When top and front facet antireflective coatings are
implemented, > 6W qcw within 5nm FWHM is expected.
1 1
• Possible applications include spectroscopy and LIDAR
0 0 at 3-4µm were alternative sources do not exist.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55
Input Power (W)
 Periodically Oriented Materials

Dr. Candace Lynch receives the

Harold Brown Award, from
Secretary Michael Donley , for
research funded by AFOSR

"Dr. Lynch's technology breakthrough is not only a national asset, but a

testament to her dedication to science with a focus on national security,“
Dr. David Jerome, Director RY

FY11 Venture Fund Projects Approved but hold pending funding realignment

• Advanced Epitaxial Growth of Quasi-Phase- Matched Nonlinear Materials for

Counter- Measures and Sensing Applications
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Vibronic solid-state lasers: Cr:ZnSe
and Cr:ZnS

15
 High power Tm laser

36
K. Vodopyanov, PW short course SC1012
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3-µm GaSb-based Diode Lasers

17
Two-Beam Interferometric
Spectroscopy

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Dual-comb FT spectroscopy

GaS
e

GaS
e OPTICAL RECTIFICATION:
GaSe crystal is used for phase-matched parametric
frequency mixing of different spectral components
within the same pulse.

 2  3
1

Mid-IR 800-nm
pulse 10-fs
pulse
FREQUENCY

103
K.
Vodopyanov,19
PW short
course
SC1012
New Results with Orientation-
Patterned Gallium Arsenide

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(Not So) Extreme Light

x-ray beam
• High Harmonic Generation

hncutoff = Ip+3.2 ILlL2

ηαλ-5.5 21
Phase Matching

• Waveguide dispersion
• QPM
• Non-Collinear
x-ray beam
• Counter-propagating beams

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 Applications of HHG

• Atomic & molecular physics, chemistry (attosecond)

• Nano-scale imaging
– Diffraction imaging (lensless) x-ray beam
– Attosecond resolution
• Lithography
• Medical imaging

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 Practical ultrafast coherent soft
x-ray source
Lensless coherent Nanoscale heat transport
imaging

X-ray driven molecular Molecular recollision

dynamics interferometry

Electron and
molecular
dynamics in
polyatomic
molecules and
– Average power ~1012 ph/sec @ 50 eV (µW) surfaces
– Perfect laser-like coherence
– Broad energy range from VUV - keV
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– Femto-attosec pulse duration