Grant: Idea to Innovation

According to Market Research Future, the global ultrafast lasers market was valued 1.75B USD in 2021, and is expected to reach 4.48 Billion in 2028 with an estimated compound annual growth rate of 17.8% (see reference [18] of proposal). While ultrafast lasers are widely applied in academic research covering physics, chemistry, materials science, biology and medicine, this growth is driven by industrial needs where ultrashort pulses are used for manufacturing in various economic sectors including automotive, medical devices, and consumer electronics. These lasers are accurate, fast and economic tools for machining and processing materials, and are adopted to replace conventional techniques such as surgical scalpels and mechanical saws. In recent years, ultrafast laser technologies have seen a revolution: The well-established, yet complex Titanium-Sapphire (Ti-Sa) technology, providing the shortest pulses down to 20 femtoseconds with up to few tens of Watts of average power, was "dethroned". New industrial-grade turnkey Ytterbium (Yb) lasers are capable of delivering sub-picosecond pulses with kW of average power - in a highly robust and reliable manner. All major laser companies are now commercializing Yb lasers driven by scientific and industrial applications. Despite this success, a common criticism and limitation is that the pulse duration of Yb lasers is too long compared to Ti-Sa - a critical need for many applications in academia and industry. In this context, the INRS researchers have developed a novel technology capable of efficiently compressing sub-picosecond laser pulses to 10.8 femtoseconds in a simple and robust approach. With a compression ratio of nearly two orders of magnitude, this technology uses multidimensional nonlinear propagation in hollow core optical fibers filled with widely available Raman-active molecules such as nitrogen. In the context of this project, the INRS team will demonstrate this technique with state-of-the-art Yb laser systems. To enhance the value of this novel technology, they will drive coherent soft X-ray radiation with the compressed laser pulses, and will scale the technology to the visible and the mid-infrared spectral range.