In recent years, the demand for high-power, polarization maintaining single mode lasers operating in the 1.55 µm wavelength band significantly increased due to technological advances in free space communication, coherent LiDAR, quantum computing, and remote sensing. These applications benefit from the compactness, robustness, and efficiency of diode-pumped Erbium Ytterbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EYDFAs) and triggered the development of EYDFs with enhanced performance. In this work, we demonstrate a new single-mode PM EYDF with robust single-mode operation beyond 20 W output power and discuss the remaining challenges to scale the power further and how we plan to mitigate those.
Continued recent developments in Thulium- (Tm) doped silica fiber design have enabled average power scaling of 2 µm fiber laser system beyond the kW-level. One approach to furthering this development is to maximize the slope efficiency of Tm-doped fiber lasers by selecting highly-doped double-clad fibers (TDF’s) so as to promote the cross-relaxation process. The success of this approach was exemplified by Tumminelli et al. who employed an all-halide vapor-phase fabrication process to produce a single-mode (SM) fiber with a Tm concentration of 8.5 wt% and demonstrated ~70 % slope efficiency. In this work, we report what we believe to be the first high-concentration (8 wt% Tm), double-clad (DC) large-mode area (LMA) Tm-doped fiber (TDF), which was manufactured by the solution-doping MCVD process. Critical performance such as slope efficiency and lasing wavelength are characterized and compared to legacy LMA-TDF-25P/400 fiber.
Novel extra-large mode area active and passive fibers deigned to achieve up to 100 mJ and > 1 kW output power in industrial fiber laser systems will be presented. Three Yb-doped XLMA fiber sizes will be proposed, able to offer high extraction efficiency, MW peak power handling, manageable thermal load, excellent spliceability and stable beam profile. Fiber performance capabilities will be discussed with numerical simulation results. Active and passive fiber prototypes will be manufactured and tested. Key design aspects and performances including efficiency, beam profile, cladding absorption and photodarkening will be reported.
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