Multi-megawatt pulses at 50 MHz from a single-pump Mamyshev oscillator gain-managed amplifier laser.

Abstract

We have developed a compact all-PM-fiber ytterbium-doped Mamyshev oscillator-amplifier laser system generating compressed pulses of 102 nJ and 37 fs, thus having over 2 MW of peak power, at a repetition rate of 52 MHz. The pump power from a single diode is shared between a linear cavity oscillator and a gain-managed nonlinear amplifier. The oscillator is self-started by pump-modulation and a linearly polarized single-pulse operation is achieved without filter tuning. The cavity filters are near-zero dispersion fiber Bragg gratings with a Gaussian spectral response. To our knowledge, this simple and efficient source has the highest repetition rate and average power among all-fiber multi-megawatt femtosecond pulsed laser sources and its architecture holds potential for generating higher pulse energies.