160 W average power single-polarization, nanosecond pulses generation from diode-seeded thulium-doped all fiber MOPA system

Abstract

We demonstrate high average power all-fiber single-polarization thulium(Tm)-doped nanosecond laser based on all-fiber master-oscillator power-amplifier (MOPA).The seed source employed is a directly modulated discrete-mode (DM) diode at 2 μm with pulse width of 15.8 ns and tunable repetition rate range of 400 kHz to 4 MHz. The pulse duration reduced to 6 ns as the gain reshaping during amplification. The MOPA yields 160 W maximum average powers at 4 MHz repetition with 6 ns pulse width, with respect to pulse energy of 40 μJ and peak-power of 6.7 kW. The slope efficiency for the last stage of PM LMA Tm-doped fiber amplifier was 48.8% with respect to launched pump power. The polarization extinction ratio (PER) of system measured at maximum output power is beyond 15 dB. The beam quality factor M2 was measured to be 1.5 at average output power of 160 W. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest average power 2 μm nanosecond pulses laser from laser diode seeded all-fiber MOPA systems to date.