Abstract
The mid-infrared (mid-IR) spectral region holds many opportunities for new optical technologies and potentially transformative applications in medicine, manufacturing and defence. To date, however, such applications have been held back by a lack of high-brightness coherent light sources at mid-IR wavelengths with sufficient flexibility and robustness for practical deployment. Rare-earth-doped fluoride fibers are currently emerging as a promising and highly versatile platform for mid-IR laser technology and in the past few years, there has been particularly strong progress using the dysprosium ion, which offers broadband emission from ∼2.7–3.5 µm and even has potential to enable a new class of 4-µm fiber lasers. In this presentation, we review the spectroscopy of dysprosium-doped fluoride fibers and present recent developments of compact, high-power, broadly tunable mid-IR sources, in addition to offering an outlook towards further developments and practical applications.
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@conference{Woodward2018g, title = {Mid-infrared technologies and opportunities using dysprosium-doped fluoride fiber [Invited]}, author = {R. I. Woodward and M. R. Majewski and G. Bharathan and D. D. Hudson and A. Fuerbach and S. D. Jackson}, url = {https://riwoodward.com/publication_files/woodward_2018_ogc.pdf}, year = {2018}, date = {2018-11-01}, booktitle = {IEEE Optoelectronics Global Conference (OGC) 2018}, publisher = {IEEE}, address = {Shenzhen, China}, abstract = {The mid-infrared (mid-IR) spectral region holds many opportunities for new optical technologies and potentially transformative applications in medicine, manufacturing and defence. To date, however, such applications have been held back by a lack of high-brightness coherent light sources at mid-IR wavelengths with sufficient flexibility and robustness for practical deployment. Rare-earth-doped fluoride fibers are currently emerging as a promising and highly versatile platform for mid-IR laser technology and in the past few years, there has been particularly strong progress using the dysprosium ion, which offers broadband emission from ∼2.7–3.5 µm and even has potential to enable a new class of 4-µm fiber lasers. In this presentation, we review the spectroscopy of dysprosium-doped fluoride fibers and present recent developments of compact, high-power, broadly tunable mid-IR sources, in addition to offering an outlook towards further developments and practical applications.}, keywords = {dysprosium, fibre laser, mid-infrared}, pubstate = {published}, tppubtype = {conference} }