Fiber Laser

A fiber laser (fibre laser) is a laser in which the active gain medium is an optical fiber doped with rare-earth elements such as Ytterbium (Yb).

The advantages of fiber lasers include:

• Light is already coupled into a flexible fiber and can be easily delivered to a movable focusing element. This is particularly advantageous for laser cutting, laser welding, and laser marking applications.
• Fiber lasers feature high output power: Fiber can provide very high optical gain and can support kilowatt levels of continuous output power because of the fiber’s high surface area to volume ratio, which allows efficient cooling.
• High optical quality: the fiber’s wave guiding properties reduce or eliminate thermal distortion of the optical path, producing a diffraction-limited, high-quality optical beam.
• Compact size:  because the fiber can be bent and coiled to save space, fiber lasers are typcially more compact than their rod or gas laser counterparts of comparable power.
• Reliability: fiber lasers are virtually maintenance free!

For more information read Nd: YAG or Fiber Laser for Micro Welding