Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOFJena/ Strasbourg | April 22, 2026
Best Student Paper Award for Research on High-Power Laser Systems
Friedrich Möller honored at SPIE Photonics Europe
Friedrich Möller of Fraunhofer IOF has been awarded the Best Student Paper Award at SPIE Photonics Europe. The award recognized his research on polarization-maintaining fiber amplifiers, which opens up new avenues for high-power and polarization-stable fiber laser systems.
At this year’s SPIE Photonics Europe, the leading European conference for research and development in the field of optics and photonics, Friedrich Möller, a researcher in the Laser and Fiber Technology Department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF, was honored with the Best Student Paper Award.
The award was presented during the conference “Fiber Lasers and Glass Photonics: Materials through Applications V.” There, Möller presented his work under the title “Simultaneous suppression of TMI and SBS in polarization-maintaining fiber amplifiers.” With his contribution, he impressed the jury with a novel approach to the operation of polarization-maintaining fiber amplifiers.
Doubling Previous Power Limits
Fiber laser systems with high average power are of great importance for numerous industrial and security-related applications —from precision steel cutting to satellite communications. However, there are physical limits: Above a certain intensity, disruptive effects arise in the optical fiber that destabilize the laser beam and jeopardize system integrity. A key challenge, therefore, is to limit these thermal and optical nonlinear effects, which restrict the laser performance.
At SPIE Photonics Europe, the IOF research-er was honored for his work in the field of fiber amplification.
In his work, Möller demonstrates a novel laser concept designed to double the previous power limits of fiber laser systems. At the same time, it ensures a polarization-stable output beam with high spectral density. Rather than transmitting light through just one optical path of the polarization-maintaining fiber as is standard practice, the researcher utilizes both of the glass fiber’s natural principal axes simultaneously. In this way, disruptive thermal or optical nonlinear effects can be effectively suppressed. Möller successfully demonstrated this new concept at an output power of approximately 2 kW with spectral linewidths below 30 GHz. Given the broad applicability of this methodology to already optimized laser systems, it opens up new possibilities for polarization-stable fiber laser systems in the highest power regimes.