Raydiance (Petaluma, CA), which supplies ultrafast light sources, has been awarded $500,000 for a Phase II Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) contract with the Naval Air Warfare Center (NAVAIR; Patuxent River, MD).
The funding will support continued development of a novel fiber technology for delivering high power ultrafast laser light over fiber in multiple NAVAIR applications. These include light detection and ranging (LIDAR), electronic countermeasures (ECM), explosives detection, machining of exotic materials, and others.
"The development of a fiber that can transmit the high power of ultrafast pulses to any material is an extreme challenge but one we are confident we can achieve," said Raydiance cofounder and president Scott Davison.
Raydiance recently completed Phase I of the STTR, for which the company was awarded $100,000. During a collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT; Cambridge, MA), Raydiance successfully demonstrated for the first time the feasibility of using flexible, short-length fibers to compress and then deliver extremely high-peak-power pulses in a compact ultrafast laser platform. This technological breakthrough, as it is reduced to practice, will eliminate the need for free-space optics in the creation and delivery of ultrafast laser signals and promises to open up a wide array of both military and commercial opportunities.
In Phase II, Raydiance is working with the Photonic Bandgap Fibers & Devices Group at MIT to improve the capabilities, form factor, weight, and cost of ultrafast lasers by integrating the new fiber technology into commercial and military systems. The objective is to advance ultrafast performance to a level at which these lasers can be integrated into many critical Navy missions as well as into multiple moneymaking commercial markets. Commercial applications potentially include next-generation Lasik vision correction, minimally invasive surgery, advanced manufacturing, and even port security.
Earlier this year, Raydiance demonstrated the highest pulse energy ever achieved in a fiber laser at the eye-safe wavelength of 1552 nm. The milestone was reached as part of a multimillion dollar research-and-development contract with the U.S. Navy.
