Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

Photonics science and technology has yet to evolve to meet the incessant demands in a wide range of applications such as in basic sciences, laser-matter interaction, medicine, and communications. RE3+-doped nanocrystalline materials have recently shown great promise for incorporation into robust processable glasses. This proposal targets oxyfluoride glasses doped with RE3+ ions at Polytechnique Montreal (PM) in partnership with Laval University, for high efficiency laser assisted cooling, high power laser/amplifier systems and other optical integrated circuit applications. Our better understanding and purification of materials has led to the fabrication of robust oxy-fluoride glasses with nanocrystalline rare earth doping, and recently we have demonnstrated near zero net heating in these glasses when pumped with lasers. This proposal will allow us to exploit the technology of femtosecond laser writing of the lowest loss waveguides pioneered by the PIs, and the nano-crystalline lanthanides incorporated in low phonon energy glass at Laval University for compact and environmentally robust laser sources that are required for real-life applications, often necessitating vibration insensitive optical cavities, for a variety of portable, high power appliances. Hence, the ultimate aims of the proposed project is to allow the use of the highly pure, low-cost, mouldable nano crystalline (NC's)-doped lanthanide glasses with RE3+-doping for high efficiency laser pumped cryo-coolers and the fabrication of low loss waveguides by femtosecond laser direct writing (FLDW) technique, for the development of cost-effective and miniature integrated circuits in combination with Bragg gratings.*