400 mW narrow-linewidth Tm-doped silica fiber laser output near 1750 nm with volume Bragg grating.

Zhao Quan,Ning Wang,Bo Peng,Xiaoxia Cui,Wei Wei,Cunxiao Gao,Yantao Xu,Haitao Guo

doi:10.1038/srep12034

Abstract

A type of Tm-doped silica fiber laser with narrow-linewidth and output wavelength near 1750 nm was firstly presented, by using a 1550 nm Er-doped fiber laser pump source and a volume Bragg grating (VBG). By means of a 15 cm Tm-doped fiber, a 400 mW continuous wave (cw) at ~1750 nm with FWHW of ~54 pm was generated, corresponding to an average slope efficiency up to 23.5% with respect to absorbed pump power. The influence of gain fiber length on the spectrum wavelength has been investigated in detail. All experimental results demonstrate that this fiber laser will be an effective and promising pump source for mid-IR laser output.

Highlights

A type of The double-clad single-mode fiber (Tm)-doped silica fiber laser with narrow-linewidth and output wavelength near 1750 nm was firstly presented, by using a 1550 nm Er-doped fiber laser pump source and a volume Bragg grating (VBG)
The first report on single frequency 1735 nm distributed feedback (DFB) Tm-doped silica fiber laser was pumped with a Ti: sapphire laser at 790 nm, but only 1 mW maximum output and 0.2% slope efficiency were obtained[7]
In this paper we report a narrow-linewidth Tm-doped fiber laser output at 1749.62 nm produced by core pump using a 1550 nm Er-doped fiber laser and a VBG

Summary

Introduction

A type of Tm-doped silica fiber laser with narrow-linewidth and output wavelength near 1750 nm was firstly presented, by using a 1550 nm Er-doped fiber laser pump source and a volume Bragg grating (VBG). Tm-doped fiber lasers have attracted growing attention in numerous areas[1] owing to their very broad transition linewidth over ~1.7 to 2.1 μ m wavelength Most valuably, they can act as pump sources for achieving 3.0 ~ 5.0 μ m mid-infrared fiber lasers output at room-temperature, which have both national defense and commercial applications for imaging and remote sensing[2,3]. It is heart-stirring that the calculated pump threshold is only 200 mW and the slope efficiency reaches 0.16 when the chalcogenide fiber loss is 1 dB/m6 It indicates that for 4.3 μ m mid-infrared laser output, a gain fiber with high performance is prerequisite, but a practical laser pump source at 1.7 μ m is necessary. Up to 113 W of continuous-wave output at 1990 nm with a narrow linewidth of 2.2 pm and wavelength tunable from 1821 to 1930 nm with more than 52 W output power have been achieved respectively

Methods

Results

Conclusion