Flexible pulse-width tunable 1.06µm pulsed laser source utilizing a FPGA based waveform generator

This paper describes our 1.06um pulsed laser source which has the capability to generate pulses with tunable durations from picoseconds to nanoseconds. This is made possible through the use of a high speed Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) board to generate the required pulses/ any arbitrary waveforms. The FPGA codes are specially designed to generate very fast rise/fall times waveforms with the flexibility to vary both the pulse duration and pulse frequency in real time. These custom defined waveforms are then used to generate high intensity laser pulses when connected to a 1064nm fiber laser source. These tunable pulsed laser sources have potential industrial applications in precision laser micro machining, where the high thermal intensity of the laser pulses can be used to perform ablation, cutting, drilling or annealing of processed materials. Furthermore, by able to tailor the shape of the delivered laser pulses, this will lead to reduction in processing time, improves the efficiency of material removal and the quality of the end product. Our custom board can generate arbitrary tailored pulses as short as 200ps and the longest pulse is 200ns. The pulse repetition rate can be tuned from 20 kHz to 1MHz.