Fiber lasers and non-linear optics

Focus

The research team deals with investigation of high power fiber lasers and their use for material processing, medicine and nonlinear optics. The main topics are laser beam combining, generation and amplification of optical pulses, guiding the light and its interaction with materials. High laser beam power achievable with fiber lasers allows for investigation of nonlinear effects like difference frequency generation. Difference frequency generation in periodically poled KTP crystals can be used to generate mid-infared radiation for the use in laser spectroscopy and metrology. 

High-power fiber lasers 

Nowadays, high-power fiber lasers are used in material industry, medicine and as a pump for mid-infrared generators. Our research is oriented on

• rare-earth-doped fiber lasers (ytterbium, erbium, thulium, holmium)

• laser beam combining

• mode-locked and Q-switched fiber lasers

• components for high-power fiber lasers

Mid-infrared photonics

The research is focused on widely tunable generator of coherent radiation based on the difference frequency generation in periodically poled crystals KTP, and KTA. We use high power fiber lasers as sources of fundamental frequencies. The research is further oriented on applications in spectroscopy (medicine diagnostics, environment monitoring etc.) and metrology (transfer of measurement methods from near infrared to mid-infrared). The research is complemented by development of the components. We have a technology for fiber-preform fabrication, fiber drawing, fiber tapering and processing, periodic poling of crystals, thin-layers deposition, EBL, FIB-SIMS).

Special fibers 

The research is focused on optical fibers based on the thulium doped nanocrystalline zinc-titanate nanoparticles embedded into the glass matrix. Nanoparticles allow for higher luminiscence yield thank to the lower phonon energy and clustering elimination. We also develop microstructure and bragg fibers.

Advanced communication systems

Advanced communication systems are oriented on exploitation of immense transmission capacity of optical fibers that allows to transmit of more than 15Tb/s over one optical fiber. We investigate all optical signal processing that can be faster and energetically less demanding then processing in electronic circuits.

Chairman: Pavel Honzátko, Ph.D.
Deputy chairman: Pavel Peterka, Ph.D., Ivan Kašík, Ph.D.