High power, tunable, ultra-narrowband Yb-doped superfluorescent fiber source operating at wavelength less than 1055 nm with 20 nm tuning range

Abstract

Tunable, narrowband superfluorescent fiber sources (SFSs) are significantly important for spectral combination. Here, we propose a high power, tunable, ultra-narrowband Yb-doped SFS operating at wavelength less than 1055 nm with 20 nm tuning range. The system is composed of a broadband SFS, a home-mode space-to-fiber tunable spectral filter, and a three-stage amplifier chain. In order to achieve three typical characteristics, namely, operating in the shorter wavelength region (SWR) with wide spectrum, tunable and narrowband, and high-power output, the performance of the system is investigated and optimized based on the rate equations with temperature, grating monochromator and the coupling theory of Gaussian beam between fibers. Theoretical investigation indicates that a broadband SFS operating in the SWR with wide spectrum can be achieved by controlling temperature within a certain range. Moreover, by optimizing space-to-fiber tunable spectral filter, the tunable, ultra-narrowband SFS with linewidth of 0.088 nm can be obtained. In addition, the seed laser with signal to noise ratio (SNR) of more than 30 dB and the appropriate length of active fiber can gain better amplification performance from the main amplifier. Based on these optimized parameters, a high power, tunable, ultra-narrowband Yb-doped SFS has been built experimentally. The output power of narrowband SFS operating in tunable range from 1035 nm to 1055 nm exceeds 300 W with M2 factor of 1.47, and the measured full width at half maximum and SNR of which are less than 0.1 nm and beyond 30 dB, respectively. This work extends the spectral region and capacity of narrowband SFSs, and will be useful for further power scaling of spectral beam combination.