Industrial perspectives of ultrafast fiber lasers

The current status and perspectives of ultrafast fiber laser systems to be applied in production technology are reviewed. An ytterbium-doped ultrafast fiber chirped pulse amplification system generating 500 fs pulses with a pulse energy of 100 muJ at repetition rates up to almost 1 MHz is reported. Possibilities for a further power scaling using novel fiber designs based on microstructuring of the fiber are discussed. With such systems a significant increase in the processing speed in ultrashort pulse high precision micro-machining will become possible. Hence, fiber lasers offer the potential to revolutionise the high precision production technology by enabling an economic use of ultrashort pulse technology.