Short-wave infrared (SWIR) laser systems, particularly mode-locked oscillators and amplifiers in the 2-μm wavelength range, delivering extremely high peak powers and small pulse width, offer unique advantages for various scientific and industrial applications. In particular, their development is driven by their scientific potential as drivers for XUV sources with high photon energies, powerful broadband sources for spectroscopy in the MIR region (5-20 μm) and efficient conversion into the THz frequency region. In material processing, such systems are particularly interesting for polymer welding and subsurface modification in silicon wafer production chains.
Even though the SWIR lasers have seen tremendous progress in the last decade, their state-of-the-art specs in terms of average output powers, pulse energies, and peak intensities are still falling behind in comparison with modern NIR systems.
Our SWIR team's research is focusing on bridging this gap by developing a new generation of high-power ultrafast laser sources, which frequently require the implementation of new technologies and optical materials whose properties are not yet fully studied and determined experimentally. This applies, for example, to finding new effective active media for such systems and studying different power-scaling geometries, developing reliable measurement sources to confirm specifications of developed systems, and sometimes verifying fundamental properties of used optical materials and media.