Double-clad large mode area Er-doped fiber for high-energy and high-peak power amplifiers

Abstract

The use of double-clad fibers for short pulses amplification requires high active ions concentration in order to keep the active fiber length short. In the case of Er-doped fibers an increase of concentration leads to a significant drop of efficiency due to Er ions clustering. We have demonstrated through numerical simulation that efficiency of amplifiers based on double-clad P₂O₅-Al₂O₃-SiO₂ (PAS) Er-doped fibers decreases slower with Er-concentration growth if compared with standard Al₂O₃-SiO₂ fibers. In this paper, we present single-mode large-mode-area heavily Er-doped double-clad fiber based on PAS glass matrix for short pulses amplification. The developed PAS fiber has a 36 μm singlemode core and a small signal cladding absorption of 3 dB/m at 980 nm leading to an optimal fiber length in range of 5-8 m depending on the central wavelength. At first, an all-fiber nanosecond MOPA at 1560 nm was built using our PAS fiber as the final amplifier. We obtained 28 W of average output power (efficiency of 25 % with respect to the launched pump power at 976) limited by amplified spontaneous emission. Pulse energy of 1.5 mJ was achieved at pump power level of ~120 W. We believe that it is the first demonstration of mJ-energy level single-mode nanosecond fiber system. Then, direct amplification of 100-fs source was performed using this fiber. We obtained 12 nJ pulse energy and 100 kW of peak power from the fiber which is close to the record value for Er-doped fiber amplifiers.