Abstract
We demonstrated a high-power ultralong-wavelength Tm-doped silica fiber laser operating at 2153 nm with the output power exceeding 18 W and the slope efficiency of 25.5%. A random distributed feedback fiber laser with the center wavelength of 1173 nm was employed as pump source of Tm-doped fiber laser for the first time. No amplified spontaneous emissions or parasitic oscillations were observed when the maximum output power reached, which indicates that employing 1173 nm random distributed feedback fiber laser as pump laser is a feasible and promising scheme to achieve high-power emission of long-wavelength Tm-doped fiber laser. The output power of this Tm-doped fiber laser could be further improved by optimizing the length of active fiber, reflectivity of FBGs, increasing optical efficiency of pump laser and using better temperature management. We also compared the operation of 2153 nm Tm-doped fiber lasers pumped with 793 nm laser diodes, and the maximum output powers were limited to ~2 W by strong amplified spontaneous emission and parasitic oscillation in the range of 1900–2000 nm.
Highlights
In recent decade, great progress has been made in fiber lasers operating at ~2 μm which could be applied in various fields including LIDAR and material processing[1,2,3]
The output power of random distributed feedback fiber lasers (RDFBLs) was launched into the cavity of Tm-doped fiber lasers (TDFLs) from one pump port of a (6 + 1) × 1 pump-signal combiner by fusion splicing directly
For long-wavelength TDFL directly pumped with 0.79 μm LDs14, the maximum output power reached ~1 W at 2151 m when 8 W pump light was launched into the cavity, and the slope efficiency was 30%
Summary
Great progress has been made in fiber lasers operating at ~2 μm which could be applied in various fields including LIDAR and material processing[1,2,3]. In 2015, Jiang et al reported a silica-based Raman fiber laser at >2.4 μm with the maximum output power of sub-watt when employing a pulsed 2 μm fiber laser as pump source and a piece of highly nonlinear fiber as Raman gain medium[12], which is believed as the longest wavelength operation of silica-based fiber laser. A powerful cladding-pump source at the moderate absorption band of Tm ions would be essential to achieve the high-power laser emission of an ultralong-wavelength TDFL without ASE and parasitic oscillation effects. Considering that a moderate absorption band of Tm ions peaks at ~1.2 μm, high-power random distributed feedback fiber lasers (RDFBLs) and Raman fiber lasers operating in this spectral region are favorable choices Both of them have been used effectively as the pump sources of mid-infrared fiber lasers. We conducted comparison experiments on the operation of 793 nm LDs-pumped TDFLs at 2153 nm
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