High average power picosecond pulse generation from a thulium-doped all-fiber MOPA system

Jiang Liu,Qian Wang,Pu Wang

doi:10.1364/oe.20.022442

Abstract

We report a stable highly-integrated high power picosecond thulium-doped all-fiber MOPA system without using conventional chirped pulse amplification technique. The master oscillator was passively mode-locked by a SESAM to generate average power of 15 mW at a fundamental repetition rate of 103 MHz in a short linear cavity, and a uniform narrow bandwidth FBG is employed to stabilize the passively mode-locked laser operation. Two-stage double-clad thulium-doped all-fiber amplifiers were used directly to boost average power to 20.7 W. The laser center wavelength was 1962.8 nm and the pulse width was 18 ps. The single pulse energy and peak-power after the amplication were 200 nJ and 11.2 kW respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest average power ever reported for a picosecond thulium-doped all-fiber MOPA system.

Highlights

The interest for the development of stable highly integrated high power mid-infrared all-fiber laser systems for applications of atmospheric probing, laser medicine, and radar systems has been increased greatly over the past decade
We report a stable highly-integrated high power picosecond thulium-doped all-fiber master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) system without using conventional chirped pulse amplification technique
To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest average power ever reported for a picosecond thulium-doped all-fiber MOPA system

Summary

Introduction

The interest for the development of stable highly integrated high power mid-infrared all-fiber laser systems for applications of atmospheric probing, laser medicine, and radar systems has been increased greatly over the past decade. The seed laser generated pulse train at a repetition rate of 2.5 MHz and the two-stage fiber amplifiers boost the average power to 1.6 W, corresponding to single pulse energy of 0.65 μJ with a compressed pulse width of 820 fs [16]. In this contribution, we report on stable high average power picosecond pulse generation from a simple thulium-doped all-fiber MOPA system without using conventional chirped pulse amplification technique. Received 10 Jul 2012; revised Sep 2012; accepted Sep 2012; published 17 Sep 2012 24 September 2012 / Vol 20, No 20 / OPTICS EXPRESS 22443

Experimental setup and results

Conclusion