Trumpf establishes joint venture to develop ultrashort-pulse disk lasers

Ditzingen, Germany--Trumpf, well-known for its high-power disk lasers, has founded Trumpf Scientific Lasers GmbH + Co. KG (Munich, Germany), which will develop and manufacture ultrashort-pulse lasers for the scientific market based on Trumpf’s disk-laser technology.

Trumpf Scientific Lasers is a joint venture with professor Ferenc Krausz, with Trumpf as the majority shareholder. Krausz is a director of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics (Garching). He also holds a professorship in experimental physics at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. Krausz has long been a leader in the ultrafast field; for example, in 2001, when at the Technical University of Vienna, his work resulted in the first single attosecond x-ray pulses (estimated at 650 as in duration). Along with Theodor Hänsch, another leader in ultrafast, Krausz developed a technique to align the phase of an ultrafast laser pulse with the envelope peak to produce essentially single-cycle pulses.

Thermal advantages of disk geometry
A disk laser is an extremely thin optically pumped disk that emits perpendicularly to the disk face. Such a geometry leads to very efficient cooling of the gain material, allowing high powers to be reached; the thermal profile of the disk is one-dimensional and does not vary across the beam path, resulting in no thermally induced beam degradation. Normally used for continuous-wave or relatively long-pulse lasing, the technology, when applied to ultrafast lasers, can allow higher powers to be reached.

The mission of the new joint venture is to expand Trumpf’s product range to include ultrashort-pulse lasers highly suited for scientific applications that are new markets for Trumpf. The company notes that it also expects the resulting interchange of ideas with the scientific world to provide leads that will help improve Trumpf's industrial disk lasers.

Jens Rauschenberger has been appointed managing director at Trumpf Scientific Lasers.