N.P. PHOTONICS, INC. — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 28a

Description

Improving the precision of timing and synchronization has wide impact on commercial and scientific fields. An innovative fiber laser technology based on a new glass and fiber material enables an unprecedented and cost-effective improvement in time stability and precision. Low phase noise and phase stabilized high repetition rate mode-locked laser systems make possible phase-coherent division of the light signal at optical frequencies. This capability enables the development of compelling tools for many scientific applications such as high bandwidth precise timing distribution and synchronization, novel imaging techniques, precision metrology and spectroscopy, and radar system. The advantage of the frequency comb technology over the commercial counterpart is the versatility, portability, large bandwidth and unprecedented precision in the fractional frequency stability in both long term and short-term time scale. Low-noise ultrafast laser based frequency comb can be used for the precise remote synchronization of accelerator cavity fields. We propose to develop a unique all fiber laser comb system with fiber-based optical amplification to reach average power of 150W at 1550nm without compromising the pulse quality or B-integral cumulative SPM effect less than 3 rad) of the 1ps pulse train streaming at 1.3 GHz of repetition rate. This peak and average power scaling, without resorting to complicated and costly chirped pulse amplification architectures, is possible because of NP Photonics highly Er-doped phosphate glass fiber that offers high gain 5dB/cm) and power in short length. NP Photonics has commercialized an ultra-narrow linewidth, a few 100 Hz, low noise cw fiber laser, which will be used for transferring high frequency stability to the comb by carrier-envelope phase locking. In addition, NP Photonics has demonstrated a compact, stable all-fiber fundamentally mode-locked 12 GHz laser system. And finally, NP Photonics has demonstrated high peak and high average power scaling using Erdoped large mode area fiber amplifiers. We will leverage all these foundational elements to deliver on the totality of the requirements of this solicitation.