We present a pulsed fiber laser system with average power up to 265 W, pulse energy up to 10.6 mJ, pulse duration adjustable in the range 500 ps-500 ns, repetition rate fully controllable from single-shot operation up to 1 MHz, and the ability to control peak power independently of pulse energy. The system has a compact, all-spliced construction. Such a versatile laser will have wide applications in materials processing.
The responsivity of optical fibers to refractive index can be enhanced using high-order skew rays compared with using meridional rays. Skew rays can have a much higher number of reflections with increased interaction length along the core-cladding interface, which gives rise to stronger interactions with the external medium. Reflection/transmission-type refractometric sensors based on twin-coupled-core and multimode fibers showed one/two orders of magnitude increase in responsivity with skew ray excitation. The responsivity and sensitivity for the two types are ~2000%/RIU, ~1400%/RIU, and 4.9×10⁻⁵ RIU, 7.0×10⁻⁵ RIU, respectively.
The high performance of fibre lasers is largely due to the outstanding characteristics of fibres as an active medium. However, there is a need to overcome some limits at high optical powers which are imposed by the fibre design. We report on a design and fabrication of a stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) filtering fibre for high average or high peak optical power delivery applications. The fibre geometry is based on the series of circularly arranged high index rod resonators embedded in the silica cladding. The operation principle relies on the resonant coupling of the core and resonators modes. The fabricated fibre demonstrated wide transmission window and filtering of SRS from the output spectra (with the extinction which exceeds 20dB at the Raman Stokes wavelength), robustness for bending and high output beam quality. The fibre has been tested as a beam delivery fibre of a commercial pulsed fibre laser system in order to identify filtering performance and its limitations.
-We have designed and built a free space secure key exchange system using weak laser pulses with polarisation modulation by acousto-optic switching. We have used this system to exchange keys over a 1.2km ground range with absolute security. Building from this initial result we analyse the feasibility of exchanging keys to a low earth orbit satellite.
INTRODUCTIONWith the exponential expansion of electronic commerce the need for global protection of data is paramount. Conventional key exchange methods generally utilise Public Key methods and rely on computational complexity as proof against tampering and eavesdropping. Satellite systems thus require future proofing against the rapid improvements in computational power that may occur during their operational lifetime (many years). Here we discuss the feasibility of a satellite based key exchange system using quantum cryptography [1][2][3][4]. Such a key exchange system could provide the highest security method for exchanging keys between any two points on the globe. The method of quantum cryptography has a security based on the laws of nature and is, in principle, absolutely secure against any computational improvements.
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