A novel triple pump 1050 nm, 1400 nm, 800 nm pumping scheme for thulium doped fiber amplifier

Thulium doped fiber amplifier is a good candidate for S, and S+ band. This paper demonstrated a three pump pumping scheme for thulium doped fiber amplifier with 1050 nm co propagating pump and 1400 nm and 800 nm counter propagating pumps with a total pumping power 600 mW. This configuration yields up to 33 dB gain in 20 nm region from 1460 nm to 1480 nm, with noise figure <4 dB. To the knowledge of authors it is the highest gain achieved by thulium-doped amplifier in a single pass configuration with good power conversion efficiency.     

980 nm Yb-doped double-clad photonic crystal fiber amplifier and its frequency doubling

In this paper, we report on a large-mode-area double-clad 980 nm Yb-doped photonic crystal fiber (PCF) amplifier. In the experiment, an output power of 1.21 W at 980 nm with 2.5 nm bandwidth has been yielded when the PCF length was 40 cm. Through frequency doubling the 980 nm amplified laser with a BIBO crystal, an output power of 51 mW at 490 nm has been generated.     

Tapered fiber amplifier with high gain and output power

We present a high-power ytterbium fiber amplifier based on active tapered double-clad fiber (T-DCF) and capable of high single-pass gain. The T-DCF power amplifier seeded with a 320 mW narrow-band signal generates up to 110 W of average output power corresponding to more than 25 dB gain. The amplifier exhibits near-diffraction-limited beam quality (M ² = 1.06) at the highest output power, which was limited by the available pump power. With a broadband seed source, the amplifier produced a gain of nearly 40 dB obtained for low-signal limit of the seed. The high output power combined with high gain is achieved owing to amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) filtering and increased stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) threshold inherent to the axially non-uniform geometry. The amplifier operates efficiently with a wide range of input seed powers thus providing the basis for one-stage tapered amplifier which combines the functions of preamplifier and power amplifier and can be a competitive alternative to multi-stage design.     

Third-order nonlinear optical response of silicon nanostructures dispersed in organic solvent under 1064 nm and 532 nm laser excitations

Silicon nanostructures are dispersed into an organic solvent and the third order optical properties of the system are studied by z-scan technique under 1064 nm and 532 nm excitations. The experiment results show that the silicon nanostructures exhibit self-focus and saturable absorption with both excitation wavelengths. Nonlinear absorption results suggest that a new optical bleaching band exists under 532 nm excitation, and a two-step mechanism is tentatively put forward to explain the saturable absorption under 1064 nm excitation.     

大功率光纤放大器分段泵浦方式下的理论分析

利用数值算法计算了掺镱双包层光纤放大器分段泵浦方式下的稳态速率方程组,分析比较了双端泵浦和多段泵浦方式下的最佳光纤长度,最高温度和效率,并采用遗传算法对分布泵浦功率的大小和每段光纤长度同时进行了优化。结果表明,通过优化,大功率分段泵浦光纤放大器获得了较为平坦的温度分布,与双端泵浦相比,大大降低了最高工作温度,斜率效率略有下降。     

37.2 dB small-signal gain from Er/Yb Co-doped fiber amplifier with 20 mW pump power

An efficient erbium–ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier (EYDFA) is demonstrated by forward and backward pumping a 3 m erbium/ytterbium co-doped fibers (EYDF) in single- and double-pass configurations using a 20 mW pump. At the input signal wavelength of 1536 nm, the forward- and backward-pumped double-pass amplifiers achieved a maximum low-signal gain of 37.2 and 28.6 dB and a corresponding noise figure of 5.4 and 10.8 dB, respectively. Whereas, the forward- and backward-pumped single-pass amplifiers (at the same wavelength) achieved a maximum low-signal gain of 20.0 and 22.2 dB and a corresponding noise figure of 4.6 and 10.3 dB, respectively. The double-pass design offers an economical solution to high-efficiency and high-gain optical amplifiers.     

半导体激光泵浦单频高功率光纤放大器的研究

在讨论单频高功率光纤放大器工作原理的基础上,评述了单频高功率光纤放大器的最新进展。指出了单频高功率光纤放大器的关键技术:稳定可靠的、光频特性优良的信号源;吸收效率高的、受激布利渊散射泵浦阈值功率低的增益光纤;高效的耦合系统。     

Experimental study of a broad-band XeCl double-pass amplifier with SBS mirror

An oscillator-amplifier XeCl laser system has been used to experimentally investigate the effectiveness of a liquid stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) mirror for correcting the spatial aberrations of broad-band laser radiation in a double-pass amplifier. It has been found that the SBS amplifier performance is strongly dependent on the intensity I _p exciting the Brillouin medium. A good beam reconstruction has been attained at I _p1GW/cm², whereas highly aberrated output beams have been delivered by the SBS amplifier for I _p>1 GW/cm². By comparing the broad-band SBS amplifier performance to that of the same amplifier with a dielectrically coated flat mirror at one end, it has been found that the use of a SBS mirror is advantageous to obtain lower divergence output beams only for low energy pump beams (<1 mJ).     

Dual-wavelength investigation of laser-induced damage in multilayer mirrors at 532 and 1064 nm

Thin film beam splitters with high reflectivity at 532 nm and high transmittance at 1064 nm were deposited via reactive electron-beam evaporation with optimized parameters. The damage performance of the samples was investigated under irradiations of 532 nm laser only, 1064 nm laser only, and various combined laser fluences. The damages induced by the 1064 nm laser were primarily attributed to the initiators at the interface between the coatings and substrate. Under 532 nm laser irradiation only, two distinctive damage pits initiated by the submicron absorptive defects located at different coating depths and correlated to interfaces were observed. The damage effect under simultaneous irradiation in multilayer films was also investigated. The respective sensitive defects of the two lasers remained the precursors for causing damage. However, the dominant damage factors in simultaneous irradiation changed with the 1064 nm laser fluence, which also determined the coupling effect between the two lasers in terms of causing damage. Finally, correlative analysis methods were used to discuss the different coupling effects.     

Design of large-mode-area rare earth doped fiber for high power coiled fiber amplifier

The numerical study on the performance of large-mode-area （LMA） fibers coiled onto a spool in high power amplifier is carried out as the bend-induced distortion of fiber modes severely affects the output characteristics of amplifier systems. The variations for high-order mode bend distortion with different orientations relative to the plane of the fiber bend are observed and shown. Concerning the practical applications, a bend-resistant LMA fiber with the mode area larger than 1000 μm^2 and excellent highorder mode suppression is designed completely by optimizing the refractive index （RI） and dopant profile. The results indicate that a hybrid profile of RI and dopant is the best choice for LMA fiber with coiling.     

Optical coherence tomography based imaging of dental demineralisation and cavity restoration in 840 nm and 1310 nm wavelength regions

In this paper, a study of in-house built optical coherence tomography (OCT) system with a wavelength of 840 nm for imaging of dental caries, progress in demineralisation and cavity restoration is presented. The caries when imaged with the 840 nm OCT system showed minute demineralisation in the order of 5 μm. The OCT system was also proposed to study the growth of lesion and this was demonstrated by artificially inducing caries with a demineralisation solution of pH 4.8. The progress of carious lesion to a depth of about 50–60 μm after 60 hours of demineralisation was clearly observed with the 840 nm OCT system. The tooth samples were subjected to accelerated demineralisation condition at pH of approximately 2.3 to study the adverse effects and the onset of cavity formation was clearly observed. The restoration of cavity was also studied by employing different restorative materials (filled and unfilled). In the case of restoration without filler material (unfilled), the restoration boundaries were clearly observed. Overall, results were comparable with that of the widely used 1310 nm OCT system. In the case of restoration with filler material, the 1310 nm OCT imaging displayed better imaging capacity due to lower scattering than 840 nm imaging.     

Damage/ablation morphology of laser conditioned sapphire under 1064 nm laser irradiation

The damage/ablation morphologies and laser induced damage threshold (LIDT) of three different sapphire samples: original, 1064 nm laser conditioned and 10.6 μm CO₂ laser polished substrates are investigated with ns pulses laser irradiation. The results indicate that the damage resistance capability cannot be enhanced by 1064 nm laser conditioning or CO₂ laser polishing. The damage/ablation morphology of 1064 nm-laser conditioned samples is same as that of the original sapphire. But it is different from the damage/ablation morphology of the CO₂ laser polished sapphire. The “gentle and strong” ablation phases are observed in this work and several phenomena are observed in the two ablation phases. Ripple is observed in the “gentle” ablation processes, while convex spots and raised rims are observed in the “strong” ablation processes. Meanwhile, stripe damage and pin-points are observed in the CO₂ laser conditioned sapphire after ns laser irradiation. The formation mechanisms of the phenomena are also discussed for the explanation of related damage/ablation morphology. The results may be helpful for the damage/ablation investigation of sapphire in high power laser systems.     

Experimental study on the imaging of the squeezed state light at 1064 nm

Stable, low noise, infrared squeezed state tight at 1064 nm is generated by utilizing optical parametric down-conversion (OPDC) technique based on periodically poled KTiOPO₄ in a optical parametric amplifier (OPA) resonator. A non-classical noise reduction of 2.58 dB below the shot noise is observed through balanced homodyne detection. The squeezed state light is used to set up an imaging system for high-resolution imaging, and it is found that the resolution of image based on the amplitude-squeezed light is 1.26 times larger than that of infrared coherent light under the same intensity. The experimental results indicate that squeezed light is an important non-classical light, which can overcome the coherent laser shot-noise, the classical diffraction limit and limit of quantum noise.     

Experimental study on the polarization extinction ratio degradation in high power hybrid fiber amplifier chains employing PM/non-PM Yb-doped fibers

Hybrid fiber amplifier chains employing polarization-maintaining (PM)/non-polarization-maintaining (non-PM) Yb-doped fibers (YDF) were proposed and the polarization extinction ratio (PER) degradation in the amplifier chains was studied experimentally. It was found that the PER increased if the PM YDF was pumped, while the PER decreased gradually if the non-PM YDF was pumped. In addition, it was shown that the hybrid high power fiber amplifier was also coherently combinable experimentally, and it was found that the contrast of pattern captured while using the PM/non-PM hybrid amplifier chains just decreased by 17% compared with only using PM amplifier, which confirmed the feasibility and potential application of the hybrid fiber amplifier chains in the coherent beam combination (CBC) of fiber lasers.     

Narrow-linewidth ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier system with 45 nm tuning range and 133 W of output power

We report on a master-oscillator ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier system with up to 133 W of continuous-wave output power using a tunable narrow-linewidth external-cavity diode laser seed source. Stable tunable high-power operation was demonstrated from 1040 nm to 1085 nm with more than 12 dB suppression of amplified spontaneous emission.     

Third-order nonlinear optical response of Cu/Ag nanoclusters by ion implantation under 1064 nm laser excitation

The evolution of nanoclusters in sequentially ion-implanted Cu/Ag into silica glasses has been studied. The doses for implantation (×10¹⁶ ions/cm²) were 5Cu/5Ag, 5Cu/10Ag and 5Cu/15Ag, respectively. The microstructural properties of the nanoclusters are characterized by optical absorption spectra and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Fast nonlinear optical refraction and nonlinear optical absorption coefficients were measured at 1064 nm of wavelength using Z-scan technique. Results in this project indicate that different optical nonlinearities could be selectively obtained at the near-infrared region of 1064 nm of wavelength by changing the metal ingredient percentage in silica.     

Stable single frequency and single polarization DFB fiber lasers operated at 1053 nm

Stable single-frequency and single-polarization distributed-feedback (DFB) fiber laser was realized by giving a pressure on the phase shift region of the fiber grating. The output wavelength of the DFB fiber laser is 1053 nm. When the pump power of 980 nm laser diode is 100 and 254 mW, the output power can reach 8.3 and 37.1 mW and the polarization extinction ratio was 26 and 20 dB, respectively. After chopped by Acousto-optic modulator (0.3 Hz), the pulse peak value variance is 4.65%(peak to peak) and 1.098% (RMS) for 31 min.     

Amplification of 12 × 10 Gb/s WDM signals with negligible FWM crosstalk in a double-pumped fiber optical parametric amplifier

We report on the amplification of 12 × 10 Gb/s wavelength-division-multiplexed signals by a double-pumped fiber optic parametric amplifier (2P-FOPA). A gain of 10 dB is obtained using a 4.3 km-long conventional dispersion shifted fiber (DSF) as nonlinear medium. Our spectra show negligible generation of spurious FWM products, and we attribute this to the small variations of the zero-dispersion wavelength of the DSF. The 2P-FOPA performance is assessed through Q-factor measurements, and we show that for output powers per channel ranging from −15 to 3 dBm the power penalty is less than 0.5 dB.     

High-power continuous-wave output of master oscillator power amplifier system at 1053 and 1083 nm

We report the efficient generation of high-power laser radiation at 1053 and 1083 nm wavelength by using of a hybrid master oscillator fiber power amplifier system, consisting of a diode-pumped Yb-doped oxyorthosilicate solid state laser as the master oscillator and an Yb-doped large-mode-area fiber as the power amplifier. Efficient tunable diode-pumped Yb-doped oxyorthosilicate lasers at 1053 and 1083 nm have been constructed, which was scaled up to a maximum output power of 34.5 W at 1053 nm and 30.2 W at 1083 nm by a fiber power amplifier, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 93.9 and 87.8%, respectively.