Meet Menhir Photonics and neoLASE

In this interview, Antonio Castelo, EPIC’s technology manager for biomedical and lasers, talks to Jonas Heidrich, product line manager at Menhir Photonics, and Maik Frede, cofounder and CEO of neoLASE, about their collaboration and future plans.

Menhir Photonics and neoLASE GmbH recently demonstrated how the MENHIR-1030 laser seeder can be easily amplified using a neoLASE neoYb pre-amplifier and main-amplifier module.

Antonio Castelo: Can you give a brief overview of your companies and the products you are developing?

Jonas Heidrich: Menhir Photonics was founded in 2018 in Switzerland by Florian Emaury and Benjamin Rudin to offer femtosecond laser solutions. Our first product is an industrial-grade femtosecond laser at 1550 nm, which is offered at 250-MHz, 1-GHz, and now even up to 10-GHz repetition rates, with the lowest phase noise and timing jitter on the market. In 2020, we started our 1030-nm product line leveraging our expertise in robustness and low-noise systems. Menhir Photonics seeders are now appreciated worldwide for their low-noise properties, but also for being robust and turnkey.

Maik Frede: neoLASE was established in 2007 as a spinout from Laser Zentrum Hannover, to capitalize on our long-term experience in the field of diode-pumped solid-state lasers to develop customized laser solutions. We produce industrial short-pulse lasers and laser amplifiers for 1064-, 1030-, and 1940-nm wavelengths, including very-low noise laser systems for gravitational wave detection.

Although we’ve developed quite a high level of technology competence, until recently, the sales and marketing were done by me. I knew that for the next stage of our growth we would need to find a partner who could help in these areas. To cut a long story short, in January 2024, we were acquired by AMS Technologies so we could take advantage of their large sales network in Europe.

Castelo: What was the motivation for your collaboration?

Heidrich: From Menhir Photonics’ perspective, although compared with a standard fiber laser our seed lasers are pretty powerful—many applications require higher power and we identified neoLASE’s modular approach as a perfect fit. For example, if we needed an additional 5 or 10 W, we could use one module. If we needed 100 W, we could use two or three modules. neoLASE’s amplifiers also offered a flexible amplification of different laser parameters, especially for short-pulse lasers, which gives us the low-noise, high repetition rates and the flexibility we require.

Frede: From our side, we knew from working with customers that combining our amplifier with the customer’s seed laser was a good approach. But rather than develop our own seed laser sources, we started to look for sources on the market that we could bring to higher power levels to create a unique platform.

Castelo: What were the aims and results of the collaboration?

Heidrich: We wanted to explore the extent to which Menhir Photonics’ advanced laser technology and neoLASE amplifier systems could be combined to deliver unprecedented power and energy scaling with the flexibility and reliability required for applications in nonlinear frequency conversion, supercontinuum generation, and material processing.

Frede: Using the MENHIR-1030 seeder (216 MHz repetition rate, with more than 100-mW output power) with a neoLASE neoYb pre-amplifier and main-amplifier module, we demonstrated that the seeder’s power can be easily amplified to an average of 11 W in a single-stage, and up to 55 W in a double-stage configuration. Furthermore, the low intensity noise of the pulse train and the high beam quality of the seeder are well conserved, and we demonstrated a frequency conversion via second harmonic generation (SHG) to the visible at 515 nm with high efficiency >50% and up to 6.5 W of average output power.

Castelo: What are the advantages of this setup?

Frede: One of the advantages of low nonlinearity amplifier technology is that, unlike regenerative amplifiers, they fit into the gigahertz frequency ranges. But the key advantage is the system's modularity—demonstrated by frequency conversion and further amplification. Up to 6.5 W power at 515-nm wavelength is easily achieved, while maintaining excellent beam quality. Using a second main-amplifier stage, the average power can be boosted to more than 50 W. Scaling the power to the 100-W level is possible by an additional amplifier module as well as cluster-pair approximation (CPA)-free energy scaling up to 50 µJ by reducing the seed repetition rate.

Heidrich: It helps the customer because it's basically a plug-and-play system, which makes it cost effective and easy to use so customers don’t need to reconfigure the system every day and can focus on their application instead of the laser.

Castelo: What applications did you have in mind when you started the collaboration?

Heidrich: We had in mind customers who require, rather than high power, nonlinear conversion and also metrology applications with low-noise and a bit more pulse energy. One application I initially didn’t see is enhancement cavities, where the noise properties are again very beneficial.

Frede: We first thought about material processing, where we see a lot of demand for low-noise and high repetition rates, but this is still very much at the research level.

Castelo: What are your next steps?

Frede: We have a mixture of customers. Research institutes are happy to buy seeders from Menhir Photonics and a few amplifiers from us and put them together on the bench. But other customers are looking for an integrated solution with an interface and they can control everything via PC.

We’ve held talks about developing a joint product in the form of a master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA), i.e., comprising an integrated MENHIR-1030 seed laser and a neoLASE amplifier. We’re currently building a prototype for a customer and will have an integrated product available in 2025.

Castelo: Would using different seeders and amplifiers open up more applications?

Frede: We’re talking about having an infrared and a green version, and having a modulator picking down from gigahertz would also be a very nice additional step for opening more pre-sized applications where timing is really crucial.

Heidrich: At Menhir Photonics, we currently have two parallel approaches ongoing. One is picking our compact 160-MHz modulator from 160 to 80 MHz and then to 40 MHz to match the repetition rates many people use in their labs. The other is to go to really high repetition rates, which is challenging because at 1 GHz you can’t easily modulate with the same low-loss system used at 160 MHz. Working at 1 GHz repetition rate means all fiber with smaller modulators, because of the higher modulation speed required.

Castelo: Do you think EPIC should encourage more collaborations like yours?

Heidrich: The optics industry is not that large and most of us know what the main companies are doing. Some companies don’t want to collaborate and prefer to be passive attendees at technical meetings and not talk about their potential needs or even what they’re doing. But yes, if possible, I think these collaborations are highly valuable and can bring innovation as we’ve demonstrated.

Frede: Collaborations like ours are driven by specific technical demands from each side, and I’m not quite sure if EPIC can go that deep into the technology during technology meetings. It would be useful if activities are designed so members can express detailed technical demands and request collaborations that can be followed up by discussions between the companies concerned.