Self-pulsing characteristics of a high-power single transverse mode Yb-doped CW fiber laser

We present an experimental study of self-pulsing characteristics of a high-power single transverse mode Yb-doped double-clad continuous wave (CW) fiber laser. The self-pulsing features under high-power single-end pumping and double-end pumping configurations have been shown to be distinct. Our experimental observation indicates that in single-end pumping configuration, self-pulsing is predominant due to saturable absorption effect, caused by the weakly pumped portion of the fiber at the farther end. However, in double-end pumping configuration, uniform pumping and hence gain uniformity along the fiber length avoids the onset of saturable absorption of signal along the fiber length and thereby reduces self-pulsing, which finally results in a much more stable output.     

Directivity influence of signals propagation through EDFA gain medium of Brillouin-erbium fiber laser

We experimentally demonstrate a multiwavelength Brillouin-erbium fiber laser in two configurations; uni-directional and bi-directional propagation of Brillouin pump and Brillouin Stokes signals through an Erbium-doped fiber gain. The influence of these configurations on the performance of the output parameters in terms of lasing threshold, output channel generation and tuning range of the generated output channels are investigated. We discovered that there is a trade-off between these two fiber laser configurations. The uni-directional amplifier configuration provides greater tuning range of 46.8 nm against 23 nm at maximum Brillouin pump power of 2 mW and 1480-nm pump power of 130 mW. On the other hand, the bi-directional amplifier configuration provides 13 output channels against 6 output channels obtained from the uni-directional amplifier configuration at the same pumping powers. Nevertheless, the bi-directional amplifier configuration requires much lower pump power to initiate lasing.     

Investigation on achieving the diode-pumped weak line laser at 1.3 μm

In this paper, a continuous-wave (CW) diode-side-pumped Nd:YAlO₃ (Nd:YAP) laser operating at the weak line of 1339 nm has been achieved and investigated. The output of the 1339 nm laser was realized based on the polarization selection and reasonable transmittance design. The relationship between the output powers and resonator lengths of the 1339 nm Nd:YAP laser has been studied and the optimum resonator length was adopted to improve the output power. As high as 31.3 W output power of the a-axis polarized 1339 nm laser has been obtained at the pumping power of 555 W with the optical-optical and slope efficiencies to be 5.6% and 13%, respectively. This work will provide an effective way to obtain the weak line lasers for potential applications in spectroscopy, coherent terahertz generation, etc.     

Laser diode pumped actively Q-switched Nd:GdVO4 self-Raman laser operating at 1173 nm

A laser diode pumped actively Q-switched Nd:GdVO₄ self-Raman laser operating at 1173 nm is presented. The maximum output power was 2.26 W at an incident pump power of 18 W, with the corresponding optical conversion efficiency of 12.6%. Two different resonator configurations were investigated in order to achieve high output power and efficiency.     

35 W high power all fiber supercontinuum generation in PCF with picosecond MOPA laser

We demonstrate 35 W high power all fiber supercontinuum generation by pumping photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with a 57.7 W picosecond fiber MOPA. The picosecond fiber MOPA pumped supercontinuum source exhibits an optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of up to 61.7%, covering a spectral range from 600 nm to beyond 1700 nm. The compact and practical configuration of this supercontinuum source has potential to achieve higher power scale together with perfect continuum spectrum.     

Self-pulsing in Er3+-doped fibre laser

The output intensity of an erbium-doped fibre laser was studied. Experiments were performed with three pumping wavelengths: 514.5 nm, 810 nm and 980 nm. The laser output intensity exhibits three different dynamical behaviours: steady-state, sinusoidal variation or self-pulsing. In particular, in a bad (high-loss) cavity configuration, when the pumping ratio is increased above the lasing threshold the output intensity changes continuously from a steady-state to an infinite train of pulses. We also show that, depending on the cavity configuration, the transient oscillations display different forms.     

108 W Nd: YAG ceramic laser with birefringence compensation resonator

The quartz rotator's effective birefringence compensation for ceramic Nd:YAG rods has been first demonstrated. Furthermore, a high output power continuous-wave laser is presented based on an optimized resonator made up of four Nd:YAG ceramic rods. By an appropriate design of the resonator, an output power of 108 W at 1064 nm is obtained. The corresponding optical-to-optical conversion efficiency is 16.8% and the slope efficiency is 28.1%. Meanwhile, the numerical analysis for output power is detailed.     

800 mW/1484 nm highly efficient two-cascaded phosphosilicate Raman fiber laser pumped by Nd:YVO4 solid-state laser

Using 1064 nm CW Nd:YVO₄ solid-state laser as a pump, 1-km phosphosilicate fiber and cascaded cavities with two pairs of fiber Bragg grating mirrors for 1239 and 1484 nm, we obtained a CW 800 mW/1484 nm Raman fiber laser (RFL) for an actual incident pump power of about 2 W (Nd:YVO₄ power of 6.90 W). The conversion efficiency is as high as 40%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest conversion efficiency of RFL pumped by solid-state laser. The output power instability at 1484 nm in half an hour is less than 3%. In addition, the numerical simulations are also performed. Good agreement between the results of numerical simulation and the results of the experiment has been demonstrated.     

36 W侧面抽运腔内倍频Nd:YAG/KTP连续绿光激光器

通过优化平-凹-平三镜折叠腔结构设计,利用大功率半导体激光器侧面抽运、Ⅱ类相位匹配KTP晶体腔内倍频,获得高效高功率连续绿色激光输出.当抽运电流约为36 A时,得到最高36.6 W的连续绿光激光输出,对应的光—光转换效率为8.71％.在输出功率33 W时测量激光功率稳定性,其功率不稳定度为0.27%.用刀口法测量了激光器高输出功率时的光束质量,光束质量因子小于8.对高功率抽运情况下三镜折叠腔的像散补偿、失调灵敏度和基模在腔内分布情况做了数值模拟. 关键词： 侧面抽运 腔内倍频 连续波     

High power and high beam quality CW green beam generated by diode-side-pumped intracavity frequency doubled Nd:YAG laser

We report a stable high power and high beam quality diode-side-pumped CW green laser from intracavity frequency doubled Nd:YAG laser with LBO crystal. By using a advanced resonator, a large fundamental mode size in the laser crystal and a tight focus in the nonlinear crystal could be obtained simultaneously, which are favorable for high power and high beam quality CW green laser generation. The green laser delivered a maximum 532 nm output power of 40 W. The corresponding optical-to-optical conversion efficiency and electrical-to-optical conversion efficiency were 8.6% and 5.0%, respectively. Under 532 nm output power of 34 W, the beam quality factor was measured to be 1.6.     

High-power 1.5 and 3.4 μm intracavity KTA OPO driven by a diode-pumped Q-switched Nd:YAG laser

With a non-critically phase-matched KTA crystal, a high-power intracavity optical parametric oscillator (IOPO) driven by a diode-side-pumped acousto-optically Q-switched Nd:YAG laser has been realized. The maximum average output power of 13.6 W at the signal wavelength of 1534 nm and 3 W at the idler wavelength of 3472.7 nm were obtained with the repetition rate of 18 kHz, giving the optical-optical conversion efficiency of about 5.7% from diode-power at 808 nm to OPO signal output, which was the highest conversion efficiency for intracavity KTA OPO with diode-side-pumping configurations to our best knowledge. At the highest output power of 13.6 W, the signal pulse duration of 5.46 ns was obtained, corresponding to the single pulse energy of 756 μJ and peak power of 138 kW, respectively.     

Four-wave-mixing suppression in Er-fiber amplifiers by backward pumping

Amplification of chirped fs-pulses in an Erbium doped fiber amplifier upto 0.8 μJ resulted in an additional peak in the spectrum at 1584 nm. This peak, attributable to four-wave-mixing between the signal centered at 1559 nm and amplified spontaneous emission at 1534 nm, hinders the temporal recompression of the amplified chirped pulse. Compared to the forward pumping configuration, this four-wave-mixing in the amplifier was largely reduced in a backward pumping configuration. Based on simulations, explanations for the observed influence of the pump direction on the four-wave-mixing efficiency are presented. The results pointed out that the gain spectrum distribution along the fiber strongly influences four-wave-mixing effects in fiber amplifiers even for constant overall gain spectrum.     

LD end-pumped intracavity frequency doubled Yb:YAG laser

A laser diode end-pumped 10 at.% doped Yb:YAG microchip crystal intracavity frequency doubled all solid-stated green laser is reported in this paper. Using one plano-concave resonator, with the pump power of 1.2 W, 44.2 mW TEM₀₀ continuous wave (CW) laser at 525 nm was obtained, the optical conversion efficiency was about 3.7%. When a Cr:YAG crystal with initial transmission of 95.5% inserted in the resonator, the maximum output power of 6.4 mW, pulse duration width of 49.1 ns, pulse repetition rate of 2.45 kHz, and peak power of 53.1 W at 515 nm were achieved when the pump power was 1.2 W. The wavelength changed from 525 nm to 515 nm and the threshold was only 725 mW.     

Gain and gain-flatness improved photonic crystal fiber Raman amplifier based on a dual-pass amplification configuration with single pump laser

A gain and gain-flatness improved L-band dual-pass Raman fiber amplifier (RFA) utilizing a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) as gain medium is demonstrated. By introducing complementary gain spectra of typical forward and backward pumping single-pass RFA using the same PCF, we finally achieve average net gain level of 22.5 dB with a ±0.8 dB flattening gain in 20-nm bandwidth from 1595 nm to 1615 nm, which is rare in RFAs with only one single pump and no flattening filter. Compared with the single-pass pump configurations, gain level, flatness and bandwidth are greatly improved by using the dual-pass amplification configuration. The limitation of this configuration caused by multi-path interference (MPI) noise and stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is also discussed.     

22 dB all-fiber green amplifier using Er-doped fluoride fiber

We demonstrate a 22 dB all-fiber amplifier at 546 nm using Er³⁺-doped fluoride fiber by forward upconversion pumping of a 974 nm laser diode. The gain saturation effects and the power conversion efficiency of this amplifier are investigated in detail based on gain characteristics and numerical simulations.     

Investigation of Nd:YVO4/YVO4 composite crystal and its laser performance pumped by a fiber coupled diode laser

Thermal effect control is critical to scale the output power of diode end-pumping solid lasers to several watts up and beyond. Diffusion bonding crystal has been demonstrated to be an effective method to relieve the thermal lens for the end-pumping laser crystal. The temperature distribution and thermal lens in Nd:YVO₄/YVO₄ composite crystal was numerically analyzed and compared with that of Nd:YVO4 crystal in this paper. The end-pumping Nd:YVO₄/YVO₄ composite crystal laser was set up and tested with z cavity. The maximum output power of 9.87 W at 1064 nm and 6.14 W at 532 nm were obtained at the pumping power of 16.5 W. The highest optical-optical conversion efficiencies were up to 60% at 1064 nm and 40% at 532 nm, respectively.     

国产光纤实现同带抽运3000W激光输出

同带抽运是目前实现高功率光纤激光器的有效手段.本文基于同带抽运方式,以国产25/250μm掺镱双包层光纤为增益光纤,构建了全光纤化的主控振荡器功率放大器.实验中采用的国产光纤是中国电子科技集团公司第四十六研究所采用化学气相沉积结合气相-液相复合掺杂工艺制备的,其Yb~(3+)离子的分布更均匀,吸收截面更大,吸收系数更高.实验中,在种子光功率为67.8 W、抽运总功率为3511 W的条件下,实现了3079 W的激光输出,斜效率为85.9%,光束质量M~2约为2.14,3dB带宽为1.4nm,这是目前基于国产光纤同带抽运方式实现的最高功率.理论和实验结果表明国产光纤制备技术不断成熟,已经具备承受高功率输出的能力.继续提高抽运功率,优化增益光纤长度,改良散热方式,国产光纤有望实现更高功率的激光输出.     

219.3 W CW diode-side-pumped 1123 nm Nd:YAG laser

We demonstrate a high power continuous wave (CW) diode-side-pumped Nd:YAG laser operating at 1123 nm with a plano-plano configuration. By means of precise coating, a single 1123 nm wavelength is achieved. Under the pump power of 1080 W, an output power of 219.3 W is obtained, which corresponds to an optical-optical conversion efficiency of 20.3%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest output power for CW 1123 nm laser based on Nd:YAG crystal.     

1097 nm Nd:YVO4 self-Raman laser

An acousto-optically Q-switched self-Raman laser emitting at 1097 nm is demonstrated with a c-cut Nd:YVO₄ crystal, using a fiber-coupled 880 nm diode laser as the pumping source. Raman laser performances in concave-plane and plane-plane oscillating cavities are studied and compared. With an absorbed diode power of 12.4 W and a pulse repetition rate of 50 kHz, the highest output power of 1.45 W is obtained from the plane-plane cavity, corresponding to an optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of 11.7%.     

Experimental and theoretical studies on ytterbium sensitized erbium-doped fiber amplifier

The performance of a high power erbium-ytterbium doped fiber amplifier (EYDFA) is investigated experimentally and theoretically. The EYDFA provides a flat gain with an output power higher than 23 dBm in the wavelength region from 1541 to 1565 nm using a multimode pumping at 927 nm. In the theoretical analysis, the rate and power propagation equations are solved to examine the effect of fiber length on the bandwidth of the gain spectra. In the C-band region, the small signal gain of the EYDFA varies from 30 to 34 dB with 10 m long erbium-ytterbium doped fiber (EYDF) while the 927 nm pump power is fixed at 3.5 W. It is shown that the calculated output power is in good agreement with the experimental results, verifying the feasibility of our theoretical model. However, the experimental result shows a relatively lower gain compared to the theoretical result due to the spurious reflection in the cavity and the insertion loss of the EYDF which were neglected in our theoretical model.