Ultrafast Lasers and Applications

Ultrafast lasers are key enabling tools for a number of scientific and engineering fields. While the field of ultrafast laser science and engineering started not long after the first laser was invented, today laser physicists and engineers are still actively pushing the technology further in terms of spectral coverage, pulse width, and power scaling. With recent experimental breakthroughs, scientists can now access individual pulses down to 53 attoseconds. Over the past two decades, there have been significant efforts to move ultrafast laser technologies from lab to industry. Already, in fields such as precision machining and biomedical instrumentations, ultrafast lasers are becoming indispensable commercial tools, and applications in metrology and medical surgery are on the horizon.

In this line of research, our group is focused on upgrading the key photonic device that underpins a modern ultrafast laser (namely the optical switch), and we are also interested in probing deeper the mechanisms that govern the somewhat complicated mode-locking dynamics. Our findings have included the demonstration of a passively mode-locked fiber laser with 300nm tuning range; a highly tunable optical switch technology that is well capable in the 3-5 mid-IR band; a free-running dual-comb source (without any stabilization) that can be using to identify gas species in the 2um range. More recently, we have introduced a new paradigm (Total Parameter-space Probing) of making or evaluating wave-plate-based ultrafast lasers. Such technologies may lead to automation in assembling industrial-grade fiber lasers that is currently largely based on empirical experiences from engineers.

Related  group publications: