kW-level 1030 nm polarization-maintained fiber laser with narrow linewidth and near-diffraction-limited beam quality.

kW-level 1030 nm polarization-maintained fiber laser with narrow linewidth and near-diffraction-limited beam quality is demonstrated. Theoretical simulations based on the power balance equation are first performed to optimize the system parameters of the 1030 nm ytterbium-doped fiber laser for the maximum suppression of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE). With the optimized parameters, both the copumped and counterpumped MOPA lasers are implemented to obtain an output power of >1 kW. In both cases, the ASE suppression ratio reaches 40 dB with a 3 dB linewidth of about 0.14 nm, and the polarization extinction ratio is about 12 dB at 1 kW of output power. The beam quality starts degrading at 900 W of output power in the copumped structure, but maintains nearly single mode (Mx2,My2)=(1.07,1.12) until power is over 1 kW in the counterpumped structure.