Hiraku Matsukuma

We demonstrate the first actively Q-switched fiber laser operating in the 3.5 μm regime. The dual-wavelength pumped system makes use of an Er³⁺ doped ZBLAN fiber and a germanium acousto-optic modulator. Robust Q-switching saw a pulse energy of 7.8 μJ achieved at a repetition rate of 15 kHz, corresponding to a peak power of 14.5 W.

A side-pump coupler made of fluoride fibers was fabricated and tested. The tested device had a coupling efficiency of 83% and was driven with an incident pump power of up to 83.5 W, demonstrating high-power operation. Stable laser output of 15 W at a wavelength of around 2.8 μm was achieved over 1 h when using an erbium-doped double-clad fiber as the active medium. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a fluoride-glass-fiber-based side-pump coupler has been developed. A test with

This paper proposes a new optical angle measurement method in the optical frequency domain based on second harmonic generation with a mode-locked femtosecond laser source by making use of the unique characteristic of the high peak power and wide spectral range of the femtosecond laser pulses. To get a wide measurable range of angle measurement, a theoretical calculation for several nonlinear optical crystals is performed. As a result, LiNbO₃ crystal is employed in the proposed method.

Abstract A self-calibration method, in which the wavefronts of zeroth and first-order diffracted beams from a scale grating measured by a Fizeau interferometer are employed, is applied for the evaluation of the pitch deviation of a reflective-type linear scale with a grating pitch of 2.048 μm used in a commercial interferential scanning-type optical linear encoder. One of the advantages of the self-calibration method is that the pitch deviation of a scale grating can be evaluated while measuring

The correlation between the laser absorption and the conversion efficiency (CE) for 13.5 nm extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light in a laser-produced tin plasma was investigated. The absorption rate α and the CE were measured simultaneously for a laser-pre-formed low-density tin target as a function of the time delay between the pre-pulse and the main laser pulse. A clear and positive correlation between α and CE was found with increasing delay time; however, the CE decreases rapidly at longer delay t

Confocal probes have been widely adopted in various industries owing to their depth-sectioning effects. A dual-detector differential chromatic confocal probe using a mode-locked femtosecond laser source is proposed herein, and the measurement range expansion of the probe using a supercontinuum light source is discussed. Supercontinuum light has an extremely wide spectrum. A simulation based on wave optics is performed to evaluate the detection sensitivity and measurable range by considering the

This paper proposes to utilize a femtosecond Maker fringe for angular measurement to expand the measurement range by using the characteristic of the multiple visible peaks in the Maker fringe. Four different z-cut nonlinear materials and three different polarization combinations of SHG were considered in the study, and various theoretical results are calculated for both the intensity-based angle measurement and the frequency-domain angle measurement. As a result, the p-s polarization shows a sig