High energy 3 µm ultrafast pulsed fiber laser.

Peng Wan,Shuang Bai,Jian Liu,Lih-Mei Yang

doi:10.1364/oe.23.009527

Abstract

In the paper, a 3 µm mid-infrared (MIR) high energy ultrafast Er:ZBLAN fiber laser and amplification system is presented. The 3µm seed pulses were generated through an Yb-doped ultrafast fiber laser pumped optical parametric amplification (OPA). A pulse energy of 12.4 µJ is generated at a repetition rate of 100 kHz with a pulse duration of 103 fs. A Er:ZBLAN fiber amplifier was used to further boost the chirped pulse energy to 84 µJ.

Highlights

Er-doped ZBLAN fiber lasers, which can emit mid-IR (MIR) light at 2.65-2.9 μm through the transition from the upper energy level 4I11 ⁄2 to the lower laser level 4I13 ⁄2, have attracted much attention recently [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
The 3μm seed pulses were generated through an Yb-doped ultrafast fiber laser pumped optical parametric amplification (OPA)
A pulse energy of 12.4 μJ is generated at a repetition rate of 100 kHz with a pulse duration of 103 fs

Summary

Introduction

Er-doped ZBLAN fiber lasers, which can emit mid-IR (MIR) light at 2.65-2.9 μm through the transition from the upper energy level 4I11 ⁄2 to the lower laser level 4I13 ⁄2, have attracted much attention recently [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. In [8], a passively mode-locked Er-doped ZBLAN fiber laser has been demonstrated in which a Fe2+:ZnSe crystal served as the saturable absorber. The MIR ultrafast pulse train was generated and amplified through Yb doped ultrafast fiber laser pumped optical parametric generation (OPG) and OPA using MgO-doped PPLN crystals. Pulse energy of up to 12.4 μJ was obtained with compressed pulse duration of 103 fs This is the highest pulse energy obtained from a fiber laser pumped OPA. Pulse energy of 201 μJ was obtained from a Q-switched Er:ZBLAN fiber laser with pulse duration of 33.5 ns. Both are the highest pulse energies obtained from ps and ns Er:ZBLAN fiber laser systems respectively, to the best of our knowledge

High energy 3 μm pulsed laser system

Fiber laser pumped OPG and OPA at 3μm

Er:ZBLAN fiber amplifier

Conclusions