Abstract
Gain-switching of a CW fiber laser is a simple and cost-effective approach to generate pulses using an all-fiber system. We report on the construction of a narrow bandwidth (below 0.1 nm) gain-switched fiber laser and optimize the pulse energy and pulse duration under this constraint. The extracted pulse energy is 20 μJ in a duration of 135 ns at 7 kHz. The bandwidth increases for a higher pump pulse energy and repetition rate, and this sets the limit of the output pulse energy. A single power amplifier is added to raise the peak power to the kW-level and the pulse energy to 230 μJ while keeping the bandwidth below 0.1 nm. This allows frequency doubling in a periodically poled lithium tantalate crystal with a reasonable conversion efficiency.
Highlights
Rare-earth doped fiber lasers and amplifiers have emerged as technologies with a wide spectrum of applications ranging from material processing to telecommunication
We use in-band pumping which is characterized by a rapid decay from the pumping level to the upper lasing-level and it enables high energy extraction that stabilize the operation. Another important result from our design optimization of a narrow bandwidth gain-switched laser is that the effect of bandwidth broadening restricts the maximum obtainable peak power to well below the kilowatt level, which motivates the use of amplification to reach the target of narrow bandwidth and a peak power in the kilowatt range
We have demonstrated gain-switching of a fiber laser to produce narrow bandwidth, short duration, and high energy pulses
Summary
Rare-earth doped fiber lasers and amplifiers have emerged as technologies with a wide spectrum of applications ranging from material processing to telecommunication. Owing to massproduced high-power pump diodes, the double-clad pumping geometry, and a low quantum defect, multiple kilowatts of output power with diffraction-limited beam quality is commercially available [1, 2]. Another important advantage of fiber lasers is that it is possible to completely avoid free-space components, which require careful alignment and are sensitive to vibrations. We report on the construction of a simple, gain-switched, Yb-doped fiber laser with a narrow bandwidth. To our knowledge, the first thorough characterization of the bandwidth versus pulse energy and repetition rate of such a gain-switched fiber laser. We demonstrate an application of the laser, namely frequency doubling in a nonlinear crystal
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