Faming Xu, PhD

Faming Xu works on diode-pumped solid-state (DPSS) laser design at Cutting Edge Optronics, where he has spent more than 18 years developing high-energy pulsed laser systems. He led development of the Patara product line and of custom Gigashot laser systems.

His work centers on joule-class Nd:YLF and Nd:YAG systems: master-oscillator power-amplifier (MOPA) architectures, injection seeding, second-harmonic generation to 527 nm and 532 nm, the energy stability and beam quality. Those systems have to hold over many hours of operation. Recent work produced an all diode-pumped 7 joule, 4 nanosecond, 10 Hz laser at 527 nm, the highest green pulse energy CEO has built, designed as a pump source for a petawatt-class optical parametric chirped pulse amplifier (OPCPA) facility.

He presented that system at the 2024 International Conference on Ultrahigh Intensity Lasers (ICUIL). He is also a co-author of the SPIE paper describing CEO’s all diode-pumped 4 joule 527 nm Nd:YLF laser for pumping Ti:Sapphire systems, which reported better than 1% RMS energy stability over eight hours and roughly 55% second-harmonic conversion efficiency at 4 J.

• • PhD, Laser Physics and Optics, Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), 1996. Dissertation: Laser Pulse Temporal Profile Shaping for High Energy Laser System.
  • Bachelor of Science, Electrical and Electronic engineering, Dalian University of Technology, 1989.

• High-energy DPSS laser systems. Joule-class Nd:YLF and Nd:YAG systems in MOPA configuration, from oscillator through final amplifier.
• Frequency conversion. Second-harmonic generation to 527 nm and 532 nm, and the conversion efficiency achievable at joule-level input.
• Energy stability and beam quality. Injection seeding, flat-top near-field beam shaping, and long-term RMS energy stability in production systems.
• Product development. Patara series and custom Gigashot laser systems, from prototype through qualified product.
• Pump sources for ultrafast facilities. Ti:Sapphire and OPCPA pumping at petawatt-class facilities.

1. All Diode-pumped 10 Hz 7 Joule Nanosecond 527nm Laser for Optical Parametric Chirped Pulse Amplifier (OPCPA) Pump. Faming Xu, Jay Doster, and Ryan Feeler. Solid State Lasers XXXIV: Technology and Devices. Vol. 13341. SPIE, 2025.
2. All diode-pumped 10 Hz 7 joule nanosecond 527 nm laser for OPCPA pump. Faming Xu, Jay Doster, and Ryan Feeler. Poster presented at the International Conference on Ultrahigh Intensity Lasers (ICUIL), September 2024.
3. Robust DPSS lasers for LIDAR applications (Conference Presentation). Feeler, Ryan, Christopher Briggs, Wade Collins, George J. Doster, and Faming Xu. Solid State Lasers XXVII: Technology and Devices, vol. 10511, p. 105111G. SPIE, 2018.
4. All diode-pumped 4 joule 527 nm Nd:YLF laser for pumping Ti:Sapphire lasers. Faming Xu, Chris Briggs, Jay Doster, Ryan Feeler, and Edward Stephens. Proc. SPIE 10238, High-Power, High-Energy and High-Intensity Laser Technology III, 1023805, 2017. DOI 10.1117/12.2264954.
5. SG-II laser elementary research and precision SG-II program. Lin, Z., Deng, X., Fan, D., Wang, S., Chen, S., Zhu, J., Qian, L., Shen, X., Xu, F., Zhu, J. and Ma, W. Fusion Engineering and Design, 44(1-4), pp.61-66. 1999.