News › Fraun­ho­fer IOF – New gene­ra­tion of thu­lium lasers achie­ves world record performance

Rese­ar­chers at the Fraun­ho­fer Insti­tute for Applied Optics and Pre­cis­ion Engi­nee­ring (IOF) have set a new world record: A newly deve­lo­ped thu­lium fiber laser sys­tem achie­ves an out­put power of 1.91 kW in the wave­length range from 2030 to 2050 nm – almost twice as much as pre­vious sys­tems. This power enables appli­ca­ti­ons in mate­rial pro­ces­sing and free-beam com­mu­ni­ca­tion over long distances, for exam­ple bet­ween the earth and satellites. 

This mile­stone was achie­ved by com­bi­ning three indi­vi­dual beams using spec­tral beam com­bi­ning (SBC). In this pro­cess, laser beams of dif­fe­rent wave­lengths are bea­med at adapted angles onto spe­cial opti­cal reflec­tion gra­tings. The laser beams are thus com­bi­ned into a sin­gle beam through dif­frac­tion. This makes it pos­si­ble to increase the per­for­mance of the fiber laser sys­tem while main­tai­ning the beam qua­lity and thus the good focusa­bi­lity of the laser beam. 

With this tech­no­logy, Fraun­ho­fer IOF is lay­ing the foun­da­tion for sca­lable high-power laser sys­tems that could achieve even hig­her out­puts in the future.

Read more in the full Fraun­ho­fer IOF press release: Link