6. February 2018

Application example: Towards optical switches based on high-speed magnetic bearing motor CM-AMB-400

A number of emerging applications ask for a dramatically improved performance of femtosecond laser systems concerning pulse energy. Due to limitations in the amplifier medium, further improvements within the laser source are increasingly challenging. Stacking of multiple amplified pulses via methods such as Stack-and-Dump seems to be a possible solution. To extract these high-energy pulses, a fast, efficient, minimal-invasive switch is necessary. State of the art switches make use of electro-optic or acousto-optic effects but their transmissive nature limits the achievable energy due to nonlinear effects or overheating. Finding a suitable switch remains a puzzling task and only recently a promising new approach employing small fast rotating mirrors as a dumping device in order to extract energy from the cavity was theoretically proposed and thoroughly described. Such fast rotating mirrors could be driven by the magnetic bearing motors such as the CM-AMB-400. As first step towards such an optical switch based on the CM-AMB-400, measurements of velocity and pointing stability have been undertaken and are outlined in the following article.