Q-Peak, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI), welcomes Eric Park as Vice-President of Defense Programs. Q-Peak is a leading developer of advanced solid-state laser technology for defense, aerospace, security, and commercial markets. Recent milestones include kW-class, cw, 2-micron-wavelength fiber lasers and GW-level, ultra-fast, near- and mid-IR lasers. Eric will be directing the growth of Q-Peak’s laser development and production capability for MIL-qualified applications. Eric brings nearly 30 years’ experience in similar business development and defense engineering, most recently heading Northrop Grumman Laser Systems laser design and engineering efforts for Infrared Counter Measures (IRCM).
Peter Moulton, founder and Vice-President/CTO of Q-Peak states “Eric‘s addition to Q-Peak’s business development and senior management team provides new opportunities and demonstrated experience in moving our technology onto military platforms, as well as enhancing our expertise in quantity production of laser systems.” B. David Green, PSI’s CEO and President of Q-Peak, added “Eric complements PSI’s corporate efforts to boost our growing production capabilities, serving unique needs of the US military and security markets.”
At the CLEO 2011 Conference, Q-Peak presented a Post-Deadline Paper reporting the first operation of the laser material Cr:ZnSe as a chirped-pulse amplifier (CPA). Cr:ZnSe is oftern referred to as the "Ti:sapphire of the mid-infrared" since it has properties that parallel those of the well-known Ti:sapphire laser material, but with laser operation centered around 2450, rather than 800 nm. The properties include a large tuning range, supporting generation and amplification of ultrafast laser pulses. Q-Peak developed the CPA system using a Q-switched, nanosecond-pulse, 1-kHz-pulse-rate, 2050-nm, Ho:YLF laser as the pump source for the amplifier, and seeded the amplifier with 130-femtosecond pulses from a passively mode-locked, Cr:ZnSe laser pumped by a cw Tm:fiber laser. The CPA output pulse, after amplification and pulse compression, had 350 microJoules of energy and a 346-femtosecond pulse duration. The peak power in the pulse, 1 GW, represents a new milestone for operation of the laser material, exceeding prior results with nanosecond-pulse lasers by nearly three orders-of magnitude. The work at Q-Peak, directed by Dr. Evgueni Slobodtchikov, was supported by a SBIR contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory.
CLEO, the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics, is the premier international forum for scientific and technical optics, from fundamental laser science to photonic applications and products, and is managed by the Optical Society of America. The CLEO 2011 Conference was held in Baltimore, MD USA from May 1-6.
From February 1 to 3, 2010, the Optical Society of America (OSA) ran an Optics and Photonics Congress consisting of three Topical Meetings, Advanced Solid State Photonics (ASSP), Applications of Lasers for Sensing and Free Space Communications (LS&C) and Laser Applications to Chemical, Security and Environmental Analysis (LACSEA). Q-Peak, Inc. presented one Invited Paper at the LS&C meeting, two papers at ASSP where the authors were soley from Q-Peak, another ASSP paper jointly with MIT Lincoln Laboratory (based on work funded under a Q-Peak contract) and a paper jointly with the Institute of Photonics, University of Strathclyde, Scotland. Copies of all the papers are available below.
The OSA-managed ASSP Meeting, like Q-Peak, celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2010. Peter Moulton, Q-Peak's VP/CTO, was involved in the initial organization of the meeting, as described here.
Q-Peak, Inc. has announced a major advance in fiber-laser technology, the demonstration of a 1-kW-cw-power, Tm-doped fiber laser, operating at 2040 nm. In contrast to prior published work, the fiber laser is of "all-glass" construction, with the pump power delivered to the active fiber through newly developed, all-glass, fiber pump-signal combiners. The system is a major step towards commercialization of high-power Tm:fiber lasers. The results, from a collaboration between Q-Peak and Nufern, Inc., were reported on January 28th in the Late-Breaking News session of the LASE Fiber Lasers VII Conference, part of the SPIE Photonics West 2010 Meeting in San Francsico. The work was supported through a contact with the High-Energy Laser Joint Technology Office of the US Department of Defense. A copy of the presentation is available here.
Q-Peak, Inc. celebrates it 25th year in 2010. The company has been and continues to be a pioneer in solid state lasers and nonlinear optics. The achievements have resulted from contractual research and development for the US Government as well as private companies worldwide. In addition, Q-Peak has developed innovative products. Two Q-Peak advances are noted in a a timeline compiled for SPIE and Laser Focus World by Jeff Hecht ("50 Years: Advancing the Laser"), a 1988 entry, under the SEO name, for one of the first commercial Ti:sapphire lasers, and a 2008 entry for the demonstration of high-power Tm:fiber lasers. The work on fiber lasers has continued, and this year, Q-Peak announced a 1-kW cw Tm:fiber laser, a new record for this technology (see separate news item).
Q-Peak began operations in 1985 as the Research Division of Schwartz Electro-Optics (SEO). It became a separate company under the present name in 1998 as a subsidiary of SEO, and changed ownership to become a subsidiary of Physical Sciences Inc. in 2001.
To help highlight 25 years of operation, Q-Peak has launched this newly updated website. One of the key elements is a compendium of all of Q-Peak's published papers in technical journals and many of its conference presentations, which can be found here.
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