Waveguide lasers in Er:Yb-doped phosphate glass fabricated by femtosecond laser writing

Advanced waveguide lasers, operating both in continuous wave and pulsed regimes, have been realized in an active phosphate glass by direct writing with femtosecond laser pulses. Stable single mode operation was obtained; the laser provided more than 50 m W in single longitudinal and transverse mode operation with 21% slope efficiency. Furthermore, by combining a high gain waveguide and an innovated fiber-pigtailed saturable absorber based on carbon nanotubes, a mode-locked ring laser providing transform limited 1.6 ps pulses was demonstrated. © 2007 IEEE.

An approach to functional synthesis of solutions in mechanical conceptual design. Part III: Spatial configuration

These three papers describe an approach to the synthesis of solutions to a class of mechanical design problems; these involve transmission and transformation of mechanical forces and motion, and can be described by a set of inputs and outputs. The approach involves (1) identifying a set of primary functional elements and rules of combining them, and (2) developing appropriate representations and reasoning procedures for synthesising solution concepts using these elements and their combination rules; these synthesis procedures can produce an exhaustive set of solution concepts, in terms of their topological as well as spatial configurations, to a given design problem. This paper (Part III) describes a constraint propagation procedure which, using a knowledge base of spatial information about a set of primary functional elements, can produce possible spatial configurations of solution concepts generated in Part II.

Mode-locked and single-longitudinal-mode waveguide lasers fabricated by femtosecond laser pulses in Er:Yb-doped phosphate glass

Mode-locked and single-longitudinal-mode waveguide lasers, manufactured by femtosecond laser writing in Er-Yb-doped phosphate glasses, are presented. Transform-limited 1.6-ps pulses and a cw output power exceeding 50 mW have been obtained in the two regimes. © 2007 Optical Society of America.