Design and Investigation of Ytterbium-doped Mode-locked Fibre Laser Systems

Abstract

This Thesis is an investigation into the construction of mode-locked fibre laser systems with ytterbium as the rare-earth dopant of choice. Such systems comprise of all-fibre components operating in the normal dispersion regime, producing linearly chirped pulses with durations in the order of picoseconds or femtoseconds. The components constructed in this Thesis are based upon the chirped pulse amplification technique. We present an improvement to an existing design of a figure-eight laser at 1030nm, a damage threshold test with an industrial laser system at 1030nm, and the construction of a chirped pulse amplification system at 1050nm.