Investigations of the High-Power, Single-Frequency, Sub-Microseconds, 1548-nm Fiber Laser Based on the Optical Pulse Modulation

Abstract

High-power, single-frequency lasers are important in the applications of coherent optical communication, Doppler wind lidar, and remote sensing. Here, a 10-kHz, 353-μJ, single-frequency, 574-ns, 1548-nm fiber laser system was demonstrated based on the optical pulse modulation. The 1548-nm, single-frequency seed laser with the linewidth of 1.25 kHz was modulated by two acousto-optic modulators (AOMs) into a 10-kHz pulsed laser. Two cascaded fiber amplifiers were spliced after the AOMs to scale up the pulse energy. The amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) was inhibited by the multistage amplification construction and the optical bandpass filters. A customized pulse profile was proposed to pre-compensate the temporal modulation and inhibit the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) effect. The pulse duration of the amplified single-frequency pulse was 574 ns, with the peak power of 753 W. A numerical model was also built for investigating the dynamic of the interaction process inside the power amplifier. The simulated results indicate the maximum output power of the 10-kHz, customized single-frequency laser can be 3.984 W with a pulse duration of 381 ns.