13 kW monolithic linearly polarized single-mode master oscillator power amplifier and strategies for mitigating mode instabilities

We report on the high power amplification of narrow-linewidth polarization-maintained (PM) laser in all-fiber PM MOPA configuration, which can operate with linewidth around 2GHz at above 1kW power level. Pump-limited maximum narrow-linewidth output power is 1.4kW without SBS effect, and the linearly-polarization single-mode output power was limited to ~550W by mode instabilities (MI). The beam quality of the fiber amplifier (M2 ) was measured under different power, which degrades gradually from ~1.4 to ~2.2 after the onset of MI. The polarization extinction rate is measured to be about 90% before the onset of MI and reduce dramatically after MI sets in. The experimental results are analyzed based on a novel semi-analytical model, which has taken the effects of gain saturation into account. The theoretical results agree well with the experimental results. Mitigating MI by coiling the gain fiber has been analyzed and demonstrated numerically. It shows that, by tight coiling of the gain fiber to a radius of 4cm, the MI threshold can increase to 2.5 times higher than that without coiling or loose coiling, which means that the amplifier have the potential to achieve MI-free 1.4kW output power.

We experimentally investigate the behavior of the mode instability (MI) threshold in the double cladding Yb‐doped fiber amplifier when the amplifier is pumped by broad linewidth laser diodes and narrow linewidth laser diodes respectively. It is found that the MI threshold increases by 26% when the amplifier is pumped by the broad linewidth laser diodes. Experiment results show that the MI threshold is affected by the local heat load rather than the average or the total heat load. The calculation shows that the local heat deposit actually plays the key role to stimulate the MI behaviour. At the MI threshold position in the fiber, the local heat deposit also changes dramatically. The effect of the thermal conductivity on the MI threshold is also studied. Our investigation shows that the MI threshold increases from 1269 W to 1950 W when the thermal conductivity of the fiber amplifier is increased from 0.3 to 5 . Through optimizing the pump linewidth and the cooling efficiency of the gain fiber, the MI threshold is doubled in our experiment.

The power scaling of linearly polarized random fiber lasers (RFLs) is investigated in detail based on master oscillator power amplifier configuration. A 442-W linearly polarized output with a narrow 3-dB linewidth of 0.28 nm and a 621-W linearly polarized output with a relatively wider 3-dB linewidth of 2.7 nm are realized. Besides, near-diffraction-limited beam quality and high polarization extinction ratio are obtained in both situations, and further power scaling is limited by the onset of mode instability (MI). To the best of our knowledge, these results are highest output powers of linearly polarized RFLs for the time being, in the narrow-linewidth and wide-linewidth situations, respectively. Meanwhile, the differences in the spectral broadening factor and the MI threshold between the narrow-linewidth linearly polarized RFL and the wide-linewidth one are discovered and discussed for the first time. It is experimentally demonstrated that relatively wider linewidth of the RFL seed is in favor of reducing the spectral broadening and increasing the MI threshold, providing significant reference for power scaling of linearly polarized RFL.

The laser performance of a high-power ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier is mainly hindered by the onset of mode instability. In this work, the slope efficiency and mode instability threshold of the ytterbium-doped fiber under various gamma-ray radiation doses have been measured. Experimental results reveal that gamma-ray radiation-induced photodarkening degrades mode instability severely, and gamma-ray radiation-induced mode instability degradation can be partly bleached by hours of pump-light injection. It is shown that gamma-ray radiation-induced photodarkening results in a steep reduction of slope efficiency and mode instability threshold; moreover, the entire irradiated fiber can be partly bleached by hours of pump-light injection and exhibits both time and gamma-ray radiation-dose saturation properties. The experimental results indicate that mode instability mitigation can be partly realized by pump-light injection and implies photodarkening suppression is beneficial for TMI mitigation, which is very promising for the advancement of high-power fiber lasers.

This paper presents an investigation of the effect of pump wavelength drift on the threshold of mode instability (MI) in high-power ytterbium-doped fiber lasers. By using a semi-analytical model, we study the effects of pump wavelength drift with a central pump wavelength around 976 nm and 915 nm, respectively. The influences of the pump absorption coefficient and total pump absorption are considered simultaneously. The results indicate that the effect of pump wavelength drift around 976 nm is stronger than that around 915 nm. For more efficient suppression of MI by shifting the pump wavelength, efficient absorption of pump power is required. The MI thresholds for fibers with different total pump absorptions and cladding diameters are compared. When the total pump absorption is increased, the gain saturation is enhanced, which results in the MI being mitigated more effectively and being more sensitive to pump wavelength drift. The MI threshold in gain fibers with larger inner cladding diameter is higher but more dependent upon pump wavelength. The results of this work can help in optimizing the pump wavelength and fiber parameters and suppressing MI in high-power fiber lasers.

In this study, a method of stabilizing the output beam of a large-mode-area fiber amplifier operating above the mode instability threshold is demonstrated. A mode control system based on the photonic lantern is used to excite dynamic mode beatings as the seeding stage of a 42/250 µm Yb-doped fiber amplifier. We propose a theoretical explanation for the validity of this method: provided that the mode interference patterns generated by input mode beatings are antisymmetric to those in the main amplifier caused by thermally induced non-linear effects, the refractive index grating will not be formed to indicate the onset of mode instability. Experimentally, significant mode stability and beam quality improvement have been achieved in this system at power levels of up to nearly four times the mode instabilities threshold.

In this paper, the model to simulate the impact of bend induced mode distortion on the beam quality and mode instability (MI) threshold of fiber amplifier is established, and the results show that the bend induced mode distortion will degrade the beam quality of fiber laser and decrease the MI threshold. The bend induced mode distortion will change the gain of active fiber, then destroy the beam quality of fiber amplifier, and decrease the MI threshold, but the bend loss will suppress high order mode. Therefore, with the decreasing of fiber bend radius, the MI threshold will decrease firstly, and then increase.

Suppressing mode instabilities (MI) by optimizing the fiber coiling methods has been studied numerically. By employing our semi-analytical model, the MI threshold of two typical high power fibers in various coiling methods has been calculated. It reveals that fiber laser systems with gain fibers being coiled in cylinder shape has higher MI threshold than those with gain fibers being coiled in spiral shape, and MI-free output power of fiber lasers can be scaled up to above 3 kW even with the typical commercial fibers in the co-pumped configurations.

We systematically investigated the dependence of mode instability (MI) thresholds on bending diameters in ytterbium-doped fiber amplifiers. The MI thresholds of a fiber amplifier, which was based on a multimode ytterbium-doped fiber, were measured at various bending diameters. It is found that the correlation between MI thresholds and fiber bending diameters depends on the operation state of the active fiber. When the multimode active fiber is in the few-mode operation, the MI threshold is successfully raised from 717 W to 1084 W by increasing the fiber bending diameter from 11 cm to 60 cm. When the multimode active fiber operates in quasi-single mode, the MI threshold is raised from 717 W to 953 W by reducing the bending diameter from 11 cm to 8 cm. According to our experiments and previous reports, it is suggested that the influence of changing fiber bending diameter on MI might be closely related to the mode coupling effect.

The phenomenon mode instability is the most limiting factor for further scaling the output power and beam quality in high power fiber lasers. Thus, it is meaningful and necessary to study the influencing factor of mode instability and finally find the approaches to mitigating its influence. Theoretical calculations reveal that the fiber V-parameter has a negative effect on fiber amplifier mode instability threshold. Nevertheless, the influence of fiber core numerical aperture (<i>NA</i>) on fiber oscillator mode instability threshold has rarely been investigated compared with that on the fiber amplifier. In this paper, we build a high-power all-fiber laser oscillator pumped by 976nm laser diodes and measure its laser efficiency and mode instability threshold of 20/400 step-index ytterbium doped fiber with different fiber core <i>NA</i>. Experimental result reveals that at the same 976 nm pump power, the fiber with relatively low core <i>NA</i> (~0.059) has a higher mode instability threshold power than that with relatively high core <i>NA</i> (~0.064), and that even a higher core <i>NA</i> (~0.064) fiber has a higher laser efficiency than lower core <i>NA</i> (~0.059) fiber. The fact shows that the fiber core <i>NA</i> has a significant influence on mode instability threshold, and a relatively high core <i>NA</i> results in a lower mode instability threshold. Also, numerical simulations explain the reason why the fiber core <i>NA</i> has a negative effect on mode instability threshold in fiber oscillator. First of all, the higher fiber core <i>NA</i> will support more propagating modes in fiber, and the lower fiber core <i>NA</i> will result in higher order mode (HOM) content leaking into fiber cladding and the overlap of HOM content and gain area is reduced, thus the gain of HOM is relatively reduced. Also, the bending loss of HOM is very sensitive to fiber core <i>NA</i> variation, and the increase of fiber core <i>NA</i> will reduce the bending loss of HOM dramatically. In conclusion, the fiber core <i>NA</i> has a significant negative effect on fiber oscillator mode instability threshold, and numerical simulationscan explain the physical origin of the negative effect of fiber core <i>NA</i> on laser oscillator mode instability threshold. Thus, for the mode instability mitigation in high power laser oscillator, optimizing the <i>NA</i> of active fiber conduces to the increase of mode instability threshold, which is helpful and necessary for further scaling the output power and beam quality.

Mode instability (MI) has become a major factor that restricts the brightness enhancement of fiber laser. This paper studies the MI threshold characteristics of the fiber oscillators with refrigerated ytterbium-doped fiber (YDF). In the experiments, two fiber lasers that can operate at low temperature were built. We rigorously tested the MI threshold of the lasers with the YDF placed in two different environments. At room temperature environment, the MI threshold of the oscillator was measured with the temperature of the YDF water cooling plate ranging from 25 °C to 5 °C. When the cooling temperature of the YDF drops from 20 °C to 5 °C, the MI threshold of the laser rises gradually, but the increase is small. In another experiment, the YDF is assembled in a constant temperature test chamber, in which the cooling of the YDF is more efficient. It is found that as the cooling temperature drops, the MI threshold of the laser has an obvious upward trend. In the process of the cooling temperature of the YDF dropped from 20 °C to −10 °C, the MI threshold of the laser was increased from 867 W to above 931 W, an increase of nearly 10%. It is the first detailed experimental demonstration which shows that decreasing the cooling temperature of the gain fiber can indeed increase the MI threshold of the fiber oscillator. This work can clarify the influence of cooling temperature on the laser thermal effect, which is conducive to perfecting the theoretical model of the MI effect.

In this work, a narrow-linewidth linearly polarized fiber amplifier with a record output power of 3.2 kW was achieved based on a homemade polarization-maintaining Yb-doped fiber corresponding to a slope efficiency of 79% and a 3 dB linewidth of 0.2227 nm. By examining various numerical aperture (NA) PMYDFs, the experimental investigation on expanding mode instability (MI) threshold in PM fiber amplifiers was put on display. And the results reveal that the MI threshold is enhanced by more than 370 W for every 0.004 decrease in core numerical aperture. Increasing the seed linewidth from 0.0454 nm to 0.0976 nm by adding 200 m polarization maintaining Ge-doped fiber the stimulated Brillouin scattering threshold increased from 805 W to above 3.2 kW. By applying the MI suppression method, a double-eight-shaped aluminum plate was adopted to coil the gain fiber, and the MI threshold increased by more than 1100 W.

Systematic experimental investigations toward the mode instability (MI) threshold in low-NA fibers are performed. By testing several fibers with varying V-parameters drawn from the same preform, a high degree of reproducibility of the experimental conditions could be achieved. This allows for systematic investigations on isolated parameters influencing the complex behavior of MI. A maximum MI threshold of 2 kW could be demonstrated for the tested fibers, which represents a new record output power for narrow linewidth fiber amplifiers. The MI threshold was found to sensitively depend on the V-parameter for large V-parameters (>2), but to be robust for smaller V-parameters. Furthermore, the fiber bending diameter and the seed excitation conditions were identified to sensitively influence the MI threshold.

In this manuscript, we demonstrate high power, all-fiberized and polarization-maintained amplifiers with narrow linewidth and near-diffraction-limited beam quality by simultaneously suppressing detrimental stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) and mode instability (MI) effects. Compared with strictly single frequency amplification, the SBS threshold is scaled up to 12 dB, 15.4 dB, and higher than 18 dB by subsequently using three-stage cascaded phase modulation systems. Output powers of 477 W, 1040 W, and 1890 W are achieved with full widths at half maximums (FWHMs) of within 6 GHz, ~18.5 GHz, and ~45 GHz, respectively. The MI threshold is increased from ~738 W to 1890 W by coiling the active fiber in the main amplifier. Both the polarization extinction ratio (PER) and beam quality (M2 factor) are maintained well during the power scaling process. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of all-fiberized amplifiers with narrow linewidth, near linear polarization, and near-diffraction-limited beam quality at 2 kW power-level.

We demonstrate an experimental study on scaling mode instability (MI) threshold in fiber amplifiers based on fiber coiling. The experimental results show that coiling the active fiber in the cylindrical spiral shape is superior to the coiling in the plane spiral shape. When the polarization maintained Yb-doped fiber (PM YDF: with a core/inner-cladding diameter of 20/400 µm) is coiled on an aluminous plate with a bend diameter of 9–16 cm, the MI threshold is ~1.55 kW. When such a PM YDF is coiled on an aluminous cylinder with diameter of 9 cm, no MI is observed at the output power of 2.43 kW, which is limited by the available pump power. The spectral width and polarization extinction ratio is 0.255 nm and 18.3 dB, respectively, at 2.43 kW. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest output power from a linear polarized narrow linewidth all-fiberized amplifier. By using a theoretical model, the potential MI-free scaling capability in such an amplifier is estimated to be 3.5 kW.