100 W-level Tm-doped fiber laser pumped by 1173 nm Raman fiber lasers.

Abstract

We present a high power and high efficiency Tm-doped fiber laser (TDFL) pumped by two high power Raman fiber lasers (RFLs) at 1173nm. The output power of the TDFL reached 96W with slope efficiency of 0.42. The central wavelength located at 1943.3nm with a 3dB bandwidth of 0.1nm. Higher output power can be achieved if more RFLs are employed to pump the TDFL. This is to our knowledge the first demonstration with 100W-level output power achieved in TDFLs around their ∼1200 nm absorption band pumped by RFLs, which indicates a promising and powerful pump scheme to achieve higher power output in TDFLs.