State of the art of cw fibre lasers

Fibre lasers are thin, light-guiding strands of glass only a few times the thickness of a hair which have a tiny core doped with rare-earth materials to absorb the pump radiation and release the stimulated emission at the signal wavelength. Fibre lasers provide unheard of attributes in the laser world – low maintenance, high efficiency, and excellent beam control, and are compact and all-solid-state. Their low cost of ownership will enable industrial laser applications, such as material processing, micro-machining, marking, printing, medicine, etc., which were hitherto thought impractical.