High-power laser with Yb:YAG crystal fiber directly grown by the micro-pulling down technique

Abstract

Single crystal fibers are ideal candidates to achieve high average power and high peak power laser systems because these gain media benefit from the spectroscopic and thermal properties of bulk crystals and the good thermal management of glass fiber. Today, micro-pulling-down technique is among the only techniques allowing to obtain such crystal fibers with diameter below 1 mm and length up to 1 m [1]. This growing process has already proven to produce Nd3+ and Yb3+-doped YAG crystal fiber of excellent quality [2, 3]. We present the demonstration of high average power laser emission in CW and Q-Switched regime from a directly grown Yb:YAG crystal fiber.