Efficient single-mode 976 nm amplifier based on a 45 micron outer diameter Yb-doped fiber.

In this paper, we present a novel single-mode Yb-doped fiber with 14 µm core and 45 µm cladding diameter. A 976 nm all-fiber high-power amplifier was manufactured based on this fiber. 10-mm-long fiber taper was used to launch the pump light, and guidance of the high NA pump was provided by a glass-air interface. 13 W output power limited only by the available pump power was achieved with 31% slope efficiency.

All-fiber polarization-maintaining mode-locked laser operated at 980 nm.

For the first time, to the best of our knowledge, we present an all-fiber polarization-maintaining passively mode-locked picosecond laser operated at 980 nm. The laser cavity had a ring configuration with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror as a mode-locking element. As an active medium, we used a specially designed cladding-pumped Yb-doped fiber with reduced cladding-to-core diameter ratio. The laser was self-starting and operated in the net cavity normal dispersion regime, where a spectral profile of the gain medium acted as a filter element. By intracavity spectral filtering, we achieved about 40 dB dominance of the signal wavelength at 980 nm over 1 µm emission in a highly stable picosecond pulsed regime. The corresponding simulation was performed to extend the knowledge about laser operation.

Power scalable 10 W 976 nm single-frequency linearly polarized laser source.

A 10 W level 976 nm single-frequency linearly polarized laser source was demonstrated with a two-stage all-fiber amplifier configuration. The continuous-wave output power of 10.1 W was obtained from the second stage amplifier by using a 20/130 µm single-mode, polarization maintaining, 1.5 wt. % ytterbium-doped phosphate double-clad fiber. This all-fiber single-frequency laser source is very promising for watt-level deep ultraviolet laser generation via frequency quadrupling.

Tapered fiber bundles for combining high-power diode lasers.

Tapered fiber bundles are often used to combine the output power of several semiconductor lasers into a multimode optical fiber for the purpose of pumping fiber lasers and amplifiers. It is generally recognized that the brightness of such combiners does not exceed the brightness of the individual input fibers. We report that the brightness of the tapered fibers (and fiber bundles) depends on both the taper ratio and the mode-filling properties of the beams launched into the individual fibers. Brightness, therefore, can be increased by selection of sources that fill a small fraction of the input fiber's modal capacity. As proof of concept, we present the results of measurements on tapered fiber-bundle combiners having a low-output étendue. Under low mode-filling conditions per input multimode fiber (i.e., fraction of filled modes < or =0.29), we report brightness enhancements of 8.0 dB for 19 x 1 bundles, 6.7 dB for 7 x 1 bundles, and 4.0 dB for 3 x 1 combiners. Our measured coupling efficiency variations of approximately 1%-2% among the various fibers in a given bundle confirm the uniformity and quality of the fabricated devices.