All-fiber-integrated single frequency tapered fiber amplifier with near diffraction limited output

Abstract

We present an all-fiber single frequency high-power amplifier using tapered ytterbium-doped fiber (T-YDF) based on a master oscillator power amplification (MOPA) scheme. Different from previous laser amplifiers, the monolithic system is all-fiber-integrated, employing a large mode area (LMA) T-YDF and co-pump scheme. The LMA T-YDF is 7 m long and its core/inner cladding diameters are 20.4/237.1 μm and 46.9/579.9 μm in the input port and output port, respectively. In experiment, the laser amplifier is shown to generate up to 53 W of single frequency laser with slope efficiency of 57.7%, which indicates more than a two times increase of the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) threshold than common LMA fibers with core/inner cladding diameters of 20/400 μm. At the highest output power, the M2 factor is measured to be 1.25 and 1.20 in the X and Y directions. Results show that this T-YDF can be scaled up to even higher power when other SBS suppression methods are employed simultaneously.