Fiber lasers: advantages and disadvantages

Fiber lasers advantages

Fiber lasers refer to the use of rare earth doped glass fiber as the gain medium laser fiber laser can be developed on the basis of fiber amplifier; Under the action of pumping light, the high power density is easily formed in the fiber, resulting in the "particle number inversion" of the laser energy level of the laser working material. When the positive feedback loop is properly added (forming the resonant cavity), the laser oscillation output can be formed.

Fiber lasers have a wide range of applications, Including laser optical fiber communications, laser space distance communication, industry, shipbuilding, automobile manufacturing, laser engraving, laser marking laser cutting, printing, metal, nonmetal drilling in rollers/cutting/welding, brazing welding, water quenching, cladding, and depth), military defense security, medical equipment, large infrastructure, as other laser pump sources are used, and so on.

Fiber laser, as a representative of the third generation of laser technology, has the following advantages:

(1) the advantages of miniaturization and intensification brought by the low manufacturing cost and mature technology of glass fiber and the scalability of optical fiber;

(2) Glass fiber does not need strict phase matching for incident pump light like crystal, because the absorption band is wider due to non-uniform broadening caused by Stark splitting of glass matrix;

(3) Glass material has a very low volume area ratio, fast heat dissipation, low loss, so the upconversion efficiency is high, low laser threshold;

(4) The output laser wavelength is large: this is because the rare earth ion level is very rich and there are many kinds of rare earth ions;

(5) tunability: the rare earth ion energy level is wide and the fluorescence spectrum of glass fiber is wide.

(6) Because there is no optical lens in the resonant cavity of the fiber laser, it has the advantages of free adjustment, free maintenance and high stability, which is incomparable to the traditional laser.

(7) Fiber export, so that the laser can easily be competent for a variety of multidimensional arbitrary space processing applications, so that the design of mechanical system becomes very simple.

(8) Qualified for harsh working environment, high tolerance of dust, shock, impact, humidity and temperature.

(9) No thermoelectric refrigeration and water cooling, only simple air cooling.

(10) High electro-optical efficiency: the comprehensive electro-optical efficiency is as high as 20%, greatly saving the power consumption during work and saving the operation cost.

(11) high power, the current commercial fiber laser is six kilowatts.

Fiber Laser disadvantages：

(1) High fiber cost.

(2) The fiber material is easy to break.

(3) Because the fiber core is small. Compared to a solid-state laser, its single-pulse energy is small.