VERSATILE INFRARED LIGHT SOURCE FOR ADVANCED ILLUMINATION

Medical and consumer electronics markets drive an ever-growing demand for powerful, compact, high quality and cost-effective femtosecond (fs) sources. Ophthalmic surgery and stent manufacturing in the medical field, post-processing of OLED panels defective pixels and smartphones machining in the consumer electronic field are examples of maturing processes where Ultrafast Lasers (UL) are key enablers. In the global scientific instrumentation market, non-linear multimodal optical microscopy (multiphoton absorption fluorescence or coherent Raman microscopy), high energy photon coherent radiation via high harmonic generation processes, high energy particle beam generation, time-resolved dynamic charge transfer studies in materials are in increasing use in research laboratories. Such increasing business perspectives fuel a worldwide competition for UL manufacturers.The VISUAL project aims to strengthen the leadership of the industrial UL manufacturing partners in the scientific, medical and industrial application fields, based upon a novel design-to-cost and innovative UL platform providing an unprecedented technical versatility. This high-average-power platform will deliver ultrashort optical pulses with pulse-on-demand capability at very high repetition rates (60 MHz) and with extremely broad wavelength tuning ability. The numerous benefits of this platform, designed for multi-purpose applications cases, will be assessed, within the framework of VISUAL, in label-free bio-imaging and medical diagnosis, in “on-chip” particle acceleration for electron-beam therapy, and in advanced fiber and glass microstructuration.