Innovative and manufacturable approaches to exploiting low cost-per-Watt diode-laser pumping of Ti:sapphire

In confidence: Relevant collaborations are subject to NDA

This studentship will pursue novel design strategies that in combination have the potential to take diode-pumped Ti:sapphire lasers from being a potential lower cost replacement for conventional mid-market Ti:sapphire lasers to being an approach with the potential to bring the enabling performance and flexibility of Ti:sapphire to applications where current systems are much too bulky, expensive and complex. To do this, the studentship will look at a combination of the following themes (with the mix dependent on the status of each theme when the student begins):

1. Optimising the Ti:sapphire crystal specification for diode pumping, building on our recent work on ameliorating pump-induced loss in blue-pumped Ti:sapphire lasers (blue is the performance sweet-spot for InGaN diode lasers, combining the highest power and efficiency with the lowest cost) [2].

2. Exploiting laser-based manufacturing techniques to modify Ti:sapphire crystals such that they are both better able to support diode-laser pumping and so that the manufacture of future Ti:sapphire lasers can be greatly simplified. (Building on two nascent collaborations with UK university partners.)

3. Developing and exploiting new approaches to Ti:sapphire laser design including multi-rod resonators (to allow scale up of pump power increasing the 'pumping ports' and so the number of diode laser that can be used) and amplifier based approaches to modular Ti:sapphire laser design. Both of these approaches will be significantly enhanced by the techniques to be developed under theme 2.

They also both provide a means, absent from conventional Ti:sapphire laser designs, to exploit the fact that pump power for Ti:sapphire is two orders of magnitude cheaper under diode pumping (