LED pumped tunable lasers – EDELVEIS

The EDELVEIS project aims to demonstrate experimentally new kind of lasers. In parallel to experiments, theoretical simulations will be carried out in order to chose the right architectures.

The project started in oct 2012.

The EDELVEIS project could bring a breakthrough in the solid state laser world with a new kind of lasers : simulateously cheap and efficient.

A patent is in redaction.

For 20 years, high-power laser diodes have become the reference for solid-state lasers pumping. However, despite their very good efficiency and brightness, laser diodes are still the ones to blame for the high cost of diode-pumped solid-state lasers. In addition, being principally developed in the near infrared and only recently in the violet-blue (but with relatively low powers), they are almost useless to pump organic media and cannot pump Ti:sapphire, whose absorption bands are located in the UV-visible and in the green, respectively. Notwithstanding their remarkable performance (very broad tunability across the visible for organic lasers, and the shortest pulse duration ever produced by a laser oscillator for Ti:sapphire), the market perspectives for these lasers is noticeably limited by their complex and costly pump sources (generally frequency doubled diode-pumped solid state lasers). An attractive solution could be to use cheap visible Light Emitting Diodes (LED) whose performance have considerably increased during the last two years.However, a LED has a power density being 3 to 4 times lower than a laser diode, making LED-pumping of tunable media like organic materials and Ti:sapphire nearly impossible, all the more than these media have bad spectroscopic properties.
But things are moving. The huge market of lightning is pulling the performance of LEDs forward and is pushing their cost down to 1€ per optical watt : 100 to 1000 times lower than the price per watt for a high power laser diode (depending on the wavelength). If LED pumping of tunable laser remains difficult, it seems to be possible, considering the innovations brought by this EDELVEIS project (French acronym for excitation by electro -luminescent diodes of tunable media emitting in the visible and the near infrared). By using innovative non imaging pumping systems and LED operating in pulsed regime, this project shows that reaching the oscillation threshold for organic lasers and Ti:sapphire lasers is a realistic challenge.
The objective of the EDELVEIS project is to develop LED pumped tunable lasers within four years : tunable oscillators in the visible and in the near infrared and ultimately amplifier modules for Ti:sapphire femtosecond laser chain. As the LEDs, the lasers will operate in pulsed regime at repetition rates typically below 1 kHz. The EDELVEIS project propose a switch of paradigm with the demonstration of new solid-state lasers having simple and compact setup and cost 100 to 1000 times lower than today lasers. Two research laboratories specialized in organic lasers (Laboratoire de Physique des Lasers, LPL, Université Paris 13) and solid state lasers (Laboratoire Charles Fabry, LCF, Institut d’Optique) associated with a startup company (EFFILUX) expert in LED lightning have decided to associate their skills in order to catch this research opportunity right now. Being original and very innovative, the project should lead to several patents and many publications including major breakthrough like first LED pumped Ti:sapphire lasers. Moreover, the project has a strong economic potential. Applications of visible tunable lasers and femtosecond lasers are related to many domains: instrumentation and sensing, medicine or material processing. In EFFILUX strategy, the EDELVEIS project is a key for its future development. EFFILUX could benefit from a leader position in LED pumped lasers tunable in the visible and in the near infrared and also in amplifiers for femtosecond laser chains.