Configurable multipulsing of a MOPA pulsed fiber laser with applications in materials processing

Abstract

The generation of configurable multipulses by advanced MOPA fiber lasers is opening new possibilities in materials processing, showing improvements in efficiency and quality while benefiting from the advantages of competitively priced fiber lasers. We show examples of the configuration capability and control of multipulses of a 20W MOPA pulsed fiber laser at 1.06μm, having and M2 of 1.3. The multipulses consist of user-defined bursts of short pulses, with burst durations ranging from 10ns up to 1000ns, frequencies up to tens of MHz within the burst, with individual pulses in the 10ns to 200ns range and with up to 12kW peak power. Multipulse repetition frequency is controlled externally from single shot up to few MHz, with the possibility of real-time switching between different multipulses.