A laboratory periodically needs to divest itself of assets to make room for new equipment. Scientists come and go, and research lines shift and change. Unfortunately, the passing of a colleague at SPPIN UMR8003 left a tunable femtosecond laser and it’s pump laser without a place to call home - with help from Michael Graupner of Team 8 - Orientation and Coordination, the laser was whisked away from it’s home in Paris to live in Nice with our team. What we, Oualid of the Lasers and Cavities group and I, thought was just an IPG 10 W fiber laser turned out to be an entire system... It will likely end up at an optical frequency comb centered around 1250 nm, with an additional supercontinuum generation module or highly non-linear fiber to connect wavelengths from 1064 nm to 1600 nm, to include Refimeve. Details to be confirmed... meanwhile: prior to any modifications, the laser schematic is fairly complex...
The crystal is in excellent condition, but the water cooling line is a mess of special interests, with an ongoing war between calcaire and/or algae... we didn't sign up for a biology experiment!
Our new friend hails from Moscow, through Avesta; bienvenue! Time to roll up our sleeves and get to work!
Testing of the pump laser to follow, cavity refurbishment and realignment after - first light soon. Thank you Michael. Stay tuned!
