32a Fiber Pumped Ho:Sesquioxide Ceramic Materials for Short Pulse Thin disk Lasers

Intense short pulse lasers are playing increasingly important role in high-energy physics research. Laser based electron accelerators are innovative tools to obtain GeV to TeV electron energies for high-energy particle physics experiments. The development of such lasers puts stringent challenges on the very limits of the laser materials themselves. The goal of this project is to develop Ho:sesquioxide ceramic thin-disk gain media for fiber pumped, short-pulse lasers. It will address issues limiting Type I lasers for physic research. The program will investigate Ho:Lu2O3 sesquioxide ceramic to achieve good thermal and mechanical properties. To optimize the gain profile we will use a novel doping profile. To minimize the heat burden on the disk, we will use thulium fiber pump lasers since the 1.94 micron Tm emission wavelength is an excellent match to the absorption spectrum of Ho, resulting in a small quantum defect between the pump and laser photons. Ceramics offer significant advantages over crystals for laser gain media material. First, ceramics can be produced in large volumes and low cost, which makes them attractive for high-power lasers. Second, they be made into composite gain media with complicated structures that would otherwise be difficult to fabricate with crystal growth. In addition, ceramic has proved more robust than single crystal with regard to thermo-mechanical properties such as higher fracture strength and toughness, uniform thermal conductivity, higher thermal shock resistance and thus high resistance to laser damage which make it very promising for high-power-density lasers. There are two target markets. The first is national labs and universities both in the U.S. and globally that will use or technology for scientific research in current and future high power laser accelerators. Global revenue for laser systems used in the scientific research and military markets grew from $825 million in 2015 to $1.28 billion in 2018 and is forecast to reach $1.33 billion in 2019. The second market is materials processing and lithography. These markets include lasers for metal processing (welding, cutting, annealing, drilling); and semiconductor and microelectronics manufacturing (lithography, scribing, defect repair, via drilling). The lithography equipment segment is used to print complex circuit patterns on silicon wafers. Global revenue for laser systems used in materials processing grew from $3.8 billion in 2015 to $6.16 billion in 2018 and is forecast to reach $6.4 billion in 2019. RMD estimates cumulative sales revenues of $48.03 million during the first 10 years of commercialization.