High-average-power mid-IR light source

Mid-IR coherent sources are valuable tools for use in a broad range of fields including medicine, research, and defense. The availability of high-average-power mid-IR wavelength-tunable picosecond sources is limited due to the lack of suitable active media, difficulties of thermal regulation and is restricted to high cost devices. The aim of this project is to develop a new compact mid-IR 1.5 – 3.5 μm source of high-average-power at10 W level and picosecond pulse width at moderate costs. All mentioned will make newly developed coherent source suitable for variety of applications in research and industry. The source will be based on parametric conversion of laser light in the nonlinear crystals with pumping from a unique picosecond thin-disk laser. The pumping laser with hundreds of watts of average power at 1 μm wavelength and repetition rate 1 – 100 kHz is developed as a part of HiLASE project. A high quality of the thin-disk laser beam, being free of hot spots, will prolong the crystal lifetime and, moreover, enhance the stability and efficiency of the conversion process.