2000th PHAROS Laser Has Been Shipped

LIGHT CONVERSION is celebrating the production of the 2000^th PHAROS femtosecond laser. The celebration marks a long journey of continuous development of the company‘s first femtosecond laser.

The first PHAROS laser, back in the day with average power of 4 W, and pulse energy of 0.2 mJ, was introduced at the Laser World of Photonics, Munich tradeshow in 2006. Dr. Jonas Pocius, who is now the Manager of Laser Department at Light Conversion, was only a doctoral student at the Faculty of Physics, Vilnius University, yet he significantly contributed to the creation of the first PHAROS.

“The biggest motivation for me was the possibility to be part of creating something that the world has never seen before,” remembers Jonas, “Now, with the company close to 500 employees and, most importantly, fantastic people, I feel that this kind of motivation goes along with the whole team, enabling all of us to continue the success story”.

Hard work and dedication enabled rapid development and within a few years the PHAROS laser was upgraded to a commercial product that could operate 24/7 in an industrial environment. LIGHT CONVERSION‘s first industrial client bought Pharos in 2009 and today it is still working 24/7 with an average downtime of 2%, providing excellent pump current and output power stability.  

The constant development led to new options, such as carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stabilization and repetition rate locking, which opened new possibilities in scientific applications, such as the locking synchrotrons, e.g., the world’s brightest storage-ring-based X-ray radiation source PETRA III at DESY. 

While science was pushing the first sales, the large volume industrial orders followed. Because of them, in 2016, we celebrated the 500^th unit. The relatively high average power and high pulse energy enabled new capabilities in laser-matter interaction. Thus, opening the pathway to efficient micromachining applications and also expansion of laser portfolio with the additions of CARBIDE and FLINT.

The LIGHT CONVERSION growth speaks for itself – the 1000^th PHAROS was shipped in 2019 and, just few years later, we mark the 2000^th unit. Now, the PHAROS laser has a model that comes with the specifications of 4 mJ pulse energy as well as a model with <100 fs pulse duration, both at 20 W of average power. PHAROS is highly demanded in both industry and science for material processing, spectroscopy, microscopy, and many other applications, and that‘s not stopping any time soon.