Boston Chapter of the IEEE Photonics Society

Abstract:  Fiber gain media have more than once been at the forefront of a technological revolution: their practical advantages as expressed in efficient diode pumping, compactness and monolithic robustness played a critical role in telecommunications revolution during the late nineties, while during the last decade there has been a truly revolutionary advance in fiber laser power which initiated and will continue making a transformative impact in a wide range of industrial, defense and scientific applications. Throughout the span of these two decades fiber technology underwent a significant transformation from simple single-mode fibers to complex large core structures with precisely tailored performance characteristics, and expanded into different operation wavelengths. This talk will review this evolution, fundamental operation principles of technologies involved, and state-of-the-art performance achieved with different types of fiber lasers. The last part of the talk will discuss new emerging technological frontiers associated with developing complex, coherently combined ultrashort-pulse fiber laser arrays and their potential applications.

Biography:  Almantas Galvanauskas was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1963. He received his diploma in physics from Vilnius University, Lithuania, in 1986 and his Ph.D. degree in physics from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden in 1992, for the thesis work on ultrafast optoelectronics with semiconductor diode lasers.  During 1993 - 2001, he has been with IMRA America Inc., Ann Arbor, MI, where he was leading pioneering R & D efforts on high-energy and high-power femtosecond fiber laser technology. Since 2002 he is an Associate Professor at the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department and the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science at the University of Michigan. His current research interests are in fiber laser technology and applications, ultrafast science, nonlinear optics, and high- intensity laser plasma generation.