Single-frequency 100†ns / 0.5 mJ laser pulses from all-fiber double clad ytterbium doped tapered fiber amplifier.

High peak power, narrow linewidth sources continue to be in high demand. Fiber amplifiers are a compelling option to scale peak power of long 100-ns-pulses because of their compact size and robustness. Unfortunately, stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) limits peak power of narrow linewidth fiber sources causing instability. We demonstrate SBS suppression for 130-ns pulses from a 5 MHz linewidth seed laser in a fiber amplifier by using tapered fiber with large 50 µm diameter core in the output. The longitudinal change in the core diameter induces frequency shift in the SBS gain peak and the back-travelling Stokes wave is suppressed towards smaller core. We reach 2.2 kW peak power with 18.7 dB polarization extinction ratio and record breaking 4 kW peak power by exciting both polarization states of the polarization maintaining tapered fiber. The output beam quality equals to single mode fibers with M2 = 1.08.

Broadband cantilever-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy in the mid-IR using a supercontinuum.

We demonstrate cantilever-enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy in the mid-infrared using a supercontinuum source. The approach is broadband and allows for higher photoacoustic signal intensity and an enhanced signal-to-noise ratio as compared to systems employing conventional black body radiation sources. Using this technique, we perform spectroscopic measurements of the full ro-vibrational band structure of water vapor at 1900 nm and methane at 3300 nm with relative signal enhancement factors of 70 and 19, respectively, when compared to measurements that use the black body radiation source. Our results offer a novel perspective for photoacoustic detection opening the door to sensitive broadband analyzers in the mid-infrared spectral region.