Les propriétés intrinsèques des fibres amplificatrices telles que leur robustesse, leur efficacité, leur qualité de faisceau ou encore leur compacité ou leur bonne gestion thermique, en font un candidat idéal pour le développement de sources lasers de haute puissance, capables de rivaliser aujourd’hui avec les lasers solides. Les applications de ces sources avec de fortes puissances sont nombreuses : l’industrie (usinage, marquage), la défense (télémétrie, imagerie), la physique des particules. Dans ce dernier cas, des sources ultra-brèves et ultra-intenses permettent d’envisager de nouvelles applications telles que la proton-thérapie ou bien le remplacement des synchrotrons actuels par des architectures moins encombrantes et ayant un rendement plus important. Ce travail de thèse s’est déroulé dans le contexte du projet ICAN qui vise à étudier l’architecture de ces nouvelles sources.La combinaison cohérente de plusieurs amplificateurs fibrés en parallèle permet d’augmenter la puissance de ces sources. Pour atteindre les énergies visées dans le projet ICAN, la combinaison cohérente de 10 000 fibres doit être envisagée. L’objectif de cette thèse est de développer des techniques de contrôle de la phase compatibles avec un très grand nombre de fibres, pour leur application aux lasers ultra-intenses nécessaires à la physique des particules.Deux architectures de combinaison cohérente basées sur une mesure de phase interférométrique ont été réalisées dans cette thèse. La première, basé sur l’holographie numérique, permet un contrôle de la phase sans aucun calcul, collectif tant au niveau de la mesure que de la correction. La seconde architecture possède un contrôle actif de phase basé sur un algorithme de traitement d’images et elle a une bande passante compatible avec le spectre de bruit des amplificateurs. La combinaison cohérente de 16 fibres à 1kHz avec une erreur résiduelle de phase de λ/60mrs a été démontrée. La compatibilité de ces deux architectures avec 10 000 fibres a été étudiée et nous avons apporté quelques éléments pour la combinaison cohérente d’un très grand nombre de fibres. / The intrinsic properties of optical fibers like robustness, efficiency, beam quality, compactness and good thermal management can now compete with solid state lasers to develop high power laser sources. The applications of such sources include industry (machining, marking), defense (telemetry, lidar), and fundamental research. In this case, high intensity lasers are compulsory to produce the next generation of particles accelerators more efficient and more compact, both for fundamental research and its direct applications such as proton therapy. This work was done in the context of the ICAN project, which studies the feasibility of such sources.To overcome the limitations in terms of power of a single amplified fiber, an idea is to use several fiber lasers and to combine them coherently. To reach the ultra-high peak power and high average power requirements for these applications, the coherent beam combining of 10,000 fiber amplifiers has to be envisaged. The goal of the work is to develop a scheme of phase control scalable to a high number of combined fibers.Two schemes based on an interferometric phase measurement are realized in this work. The fist scheme, based on digital holography, permits a collective phase measurement and correction without calculation. The second scheme is based on an active phase control with individual phase modulators. This control requires an image processing algorithm and has a bandwidth compatible with the phase spectral noise of the amplifiers. The coherent combining of 16 fibers at 1kHz with a residual phase shift error of λ/60rms is achieved in this case. We use this second scheme to evaluate its scalability. We show that the coherent combining of 10,000 fibers using off-the-shelf components is already possible.

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Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Physics / Kristan L. Corwin / The focus of this research is improving the pulse output energy of a mid-IR pulsed acetylene-filled Hollow-core Optical Fiber Gas LASer (HOFGLAS) system. Pump pulses and acetylene molecules interact with each other inside hollow-core photonic crystal fiber that effectively confines light and allows for strong gain. This results in lasing at 3.11 μm and 3.17 μm lines based on population inversion of acetylene molecules, which are optically pumped at rotational-vibrational overtones near 1.5 μm using 1 ns pulse duration from an optical parametric amplifier (OPA). This acetylene laser operates with no cavity mirrors because of a high gain in a single pass configuration. There are few laser sources in the mid-IR region while there are many applications for having a laser source in this range such as remote sensing, hazardous chemical detection, and breath analysis. This adds to the importance of the acetylene-filled HOFGLAS system. Some of the applications like remote sensing require high power. So, we moved toward power scaling this laser system by optimizing the laser operation through maximizing the OPA alignment to improve its modal content using longer length of fiber to increase the interaction length and improving the beam quality of the mid-IR emissions. The highest pulse energy ever obtained in the 3 µm mid-IR region from the acetylene-filled HOFGLAS after applying the improvements is reported here (1.4 μJ). Higher mid-IR pulse energies can be achieved by improving the pulse energy achievable from the OPA pump source and working with longer pulse duration to decrease the bandwidth of the OPA. This operation demonstrates many novel properties of acetylene-filled pulsed mid-IR hollow-core fiber lasers. The excellent spatial beam quality at highest power and phenomenological scaling of saturation power and efficiency with pressure that we observe point to the promise of power scaling and motivate further development of numerical models of the laser for deeper insight into these effects. M² measurement method was used to examine spatial beam quality and it was found to be fiber-dependent. For the improved setup, M² was investigated at several input pump powers in addition to the reproducibility checks. M² of 1.14 at the maximum output power motivates for beam combining to scale to higher power. The independence of efficiency on pressure is an evidence for reaching higher mid-IR power at a pressure where saturation behavior does not exist. achieving the highest mid-IR power to date, 1.4 μJ, encourages for building higher power OPA to produce high power mid-IR emissions. Taken as a whole, this laser exhibits novel behavior that motivates both numerical/theoretical investigation and further efforts to scale to higher powers.

Tandem pumping technique are traditionally adopted to develop > 3-kW continuous-wave (cw) Yb3+-doped fiber lasers, which are usually pumped by other fiber lasers at shorter wavelengths (1018 nm e.g.). Fiber lasers directly pumped by laser diodes have higher wall-plug efficiency and are more compact. Here we report two high brightness monolithic cw fiber laser sources at 1080 nm. Both lasers consist of a cw fiber laser oscillator and one laser-diode pumped double cladding fiber amplifier in the master oscillator-power amplifier configuration. One laser, using 30-mu m-core Yb3+-doped fiber as the gain medium, can produce > 5-kW average laser power with near diffraction-limited beam quality (M-2<1.8). The slope efficiency of the fiber amplifier with respect to the launched pump power reached 86.5%. The other laser utilized 50-mu m-core Yb3+-doped fiber as the gain medium and produced > 8-kW average laser power with high beam quality (M-2: similar to 4). The slope efficiency of the fiber amplifier with respect to the launched pump power reach 83%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first detailed report for > 5-kW near-diffraction-limited and > 8-kW high-brightness monolithic fiber lasers directly pumped by laser diodes.