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FIBER OPTIC & FIBER LASER HISTORY & AMERICAN OPTICAL Jeff Hecht Author, City of Light: The story of fiber optics Contributing Editor, Laser Focus World
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1841 Colladon's Fountain Total internal reflection
Water-air interface
Guides along parabola Scattering in water Sparkling at turbulence Dark at smooth areas
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Paris fountains at night 1889
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Origins of imaging fiber bundles • Patented 1930, Clarence W. Hansell
• Demonstrated 1930, Heinrich Lamm
• Reinvented after World War II
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Postwar fiber optics
Holger Møller Hansen Harold H. Hopkins
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The Road to AO
A.C.S. Van Heel Brian O'Brien
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A full agenda at AO
Van Heel's bundle Todd-AO Oklahoma
O'Brien Jr, Todd, Fred Zinnermann, O'Brien Sr, Hammerstein
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Brian O'Brien and Will Hicks
Brian O'Brien
• Told CIA that fiber bundles could scramble images
• Did nothing for months • Busy with Todd-AO • Briefed Hicks
• September 1954 • gave him 2 plastic-clad fibers
• Went back to Todd-AO
Will Hicks
• Physicist • Furman U, UC Berkeley
• Working on fibers for Milliken Research Trust • Textiles, not glass
• CIA hired him for AO • Assignment
• Make and clad fibers • Assemble into image
scrambler
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The O'Brien fiber patent Voided because it was filed Nov. 19, 1954. Van Heel paper was published in Holland on 12/6/53 – European style
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Will Hicks at AO
• Validated need for cladding • 'Cover story' medical imaging • Real job image scrambler • Crucible drawn fiber
• Plastic coated • Poor transmission • Double crucible glass clad
• Visits OSA Lake Placid meeting October 1956 • Meets the competition
BOSSES Steve MacNeille Walt Siegmund
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University of Michigan
Basil Hirschowitz Larry Curtiss
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The Cladding Problem
• Møller Hansen – margarine • Van Heel – Beeswax • Hicks/O'Brien – plastic • Michigan – lacquer, plastic • Hicks – double crucible glass • Curtiss – rod-in-tube glass
• Picked fire-polished rods • Excellent quality – Dec 1956 • Needed 40 km of 40-µm fiber to make 40,000-fiber flexible bundle
Cladding essential to prevent crosstalk Needed low-index transparent material But what would work?
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Hicks and the AO approach • Progress stalled • Lee Upton-AO glass
• Collapsing glass tubes onto electrical components
• Frederick Norton, MIT • Millifiore glass
• Stacking fiber, then drawing down
• Rigid bundles • Equipment delays
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Wikipedia art
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Image scrambler demonstration • Problems
• Mechanical polishing • Contaminants
• Demonstration • Looped fiber around drum • Glued one region • Sawed in half • Scrambled fibers in middle • Sawed in half again
• Encoder/decoder pair • Shipped to CIA
• Vacation at last! • Myrtle Beach • Hicks realizes codes can
wear out • Tells CIA only 18 uses
• End of project • Switches to faceplates
• Bill Gardner • Image intensifiers • AO fails to develop
• Hicks launches Mosaic
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Mosaic Fabrications • Fiber-optic faceplates • Image intensifiers • Fiber tapers • Fiber-optic Christmas tree
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Elias Snitzer joins AO • Former professor at Lowell Tech
• Shown bundle photo • Identifies patterns as transverse modes
• First single mode fiber • With Hicks, Harold
Osterberg, Michael Polanyi
• Develops mode theory
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Snitzer and glass lasers • Began work in 1960 • Neodymium-doped glass laser: 1961
• Clad glass rods • First fiber laser • First fiber amplifier • Later
• Dual-clad fiber • 1480-nm pumping
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Pioneering research
Dielectric waveguide modes First glass laser, in clad rod (thick fiber)
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Fiber amplifier
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Eli at AO Sep 1964 with big glass laser
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Trends in fiber communications • Charles Kao proposed in 1966 • Corning first low-loss fiber 1970
• Fiber was single-mode
• Bell Labs wanted multimode early 1970s • Naval Research Lab used SM for sensing early 1970s • Single-mode 'rediscovered' circa 1980
• British Telecom Research Labs • Japanese telecommunications companies • Bell Labs submarine cable group
• Global networks spread 1980s • Interest in wavelength-division multiplexing • Optical amplifiers to simplify design
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First revival of fiber laser • End pumping Nd-doped fiber with laser
• First with dye laser • End pump with diode laser
• Prompted by interest in fiber communications
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Doped fiber sensors Demonstrated 1983
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Doped fiber lasers to amplifiers • David Payne at University of Southampton mid-1980s
• Experiments with doped fibers • Demonstrates laser action by end pumping with lasers • Tests many rare earths in lasers • Demonstrates erbium-fiber laser in 1.55-µm band • Demonstrates erbium-fiber amplifier in 1.55-µm band
• Importance of fiber amplifiers • Optical amplification sought for fiber communications • Semiconductor optical amplifiers were noisy • Single-mode fiber zero dispersion wavelength 1.3 µm • Single-mode fiber minimum loss 1.55 µm
• Needed to be made practical for systems
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Snitzer OFC 88 postdeadline
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Diode pumping at 1480 nm
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The importance of fiber amplifiers • Can amplify many wavelengths simultaneously • Allowing wavelength division multiplexing • Multiplying fiber capacity by ~100-fold • Vital for long-distance transmission
• Submarine cables, continental backbone networks • Developed in early 1990s
• Just as Internet growth takes off • Fueled growth of Internet and telecommunications • Crucial element of global telecommunications network • Fiber system capacity still growing
• Spatial division multiplexing, multiple core, multiple modes • 100s of terabits per second per fiber
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Snitzer OFC 89 postdeadline
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Double-clad or dual-core fiber
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Evolution of Fiber Lasers • Diode pumping • Dual-core pumping • Erbium fiber lasers
• Communications • Short pulse research • Frequency combs
• Ytterbium fiber lasers • Industrial lasers • Materials working lasers • High-efficiency lasers
• Advantages • High efficiency • High power • Compact • Reliable
• Applications • Industrial • Instrumentation • Research • Medical
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Fiber laser efficiency • Diode pumping
• Converts electric power into pump light efficiently • ~ 50% electrical to optical efficiency
• Diode matched to absorption line • Optical to optical energy conversion
• Small photon deficit between pump and output • High excitation and extraction efficiency
• ~ 60-70% optical to optical conversion efficiency
• ~25-35% wall-plug efficiency attainable • Reduces energy requirements • Reduces cooling requirements • Reduces size and weight of laser
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NAVY LaWS (Laser Weapon System)
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Naval Sea Systems Command test integrated with Raytheon PHALANX for ship defense 6 5.5-kW fiber lasers combined to generate 30 kW Shot down UAV in marine environment, reported June 2010
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• Output beam quality BPP~10 M^2~33 • DC EOE ~ 33% • Output fiber core diameter 200um • Output NA ~ 0.09 • Output fiber length 15m • Raman level at full power expected to
be ~ -35dB • Linewidth (FWHM) ~5nm • Weight ~ 2,500kg • Size (HxWxD): 1.8m x 2.7m x 0.8m • Delivered August, 2008 • Has achieved 50kW in five states and
traveled > 10,000 highway miles
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50-kW multimode fiber laser
IPG photo
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Precision cutting
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IPG Photonics
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Femtosecond fiber laser - Calmar • Passively modelocked • Erbium 1530-1565 nm
• 100-500 fs • 1-1000 mW avg • 10-100 MHz
• Er doubled 780 nm • 100 fs, 10-50 MHz • 10-50 mW avg
• Yb 1030-1060 • 100-800 fs, 10-50 MHz • 0.5 mW-5W avg • Picosecond pulses
compressible
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PolarOnyx single-frequency fiber laser
• Linewidth < 1 kHz • 10-30 dBm output • 1530-1565 nm • Instrument or module • Applications
• Fiber gyros • Metrology • Coherent communications • Sensing • Spectroscopy
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Glass lasers
National Ignition Facility, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
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LEGACIES Ideas Inventions Enterprises
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Enterprises • Will Hicks
• Mosaic Fabrications • Galileo Electro-Optics
• 1984 Inc. • Set up in old industrial left • Goal was huge
transmission capacity • Sold to Polaroid 1982 • Hicks hired Snitzer to run
company
• Many more
• American Optical • Spun off glass lasers • Continued fiber bundles • Later sold to Schott
• Fiber amplifiers • Fiber lasers
• IPG Photonics in Oxford • Many other companies
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Thanks to • Dick Whitney • IEEE • IEEE Photonics Society • Richard Linke • Gordon Day • Optical History Museum • Schott North America • Henke-Sass Wolf
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