Short-pulse MOPA fiber laser with kilowatt average power and multi-megawatt peak power, applying advanced XLMA fiber amplifiers

Abstract

High power short pulse fiber lasers are applied in industry for many ablation processes or various surface treatments, and there is a huge demand for such lasers but with higher average power, higher pulse energy and higher peak power. This contribution presents a high peak- and average- power fiber laser with selectable pulse durations between 10 ns and 100 ns, where more than 150 mJ pulse energy has been achieved at a repetition rate of 10 kHz. In addition, for a laser pulse with 30 ns pulse duration a maximum peak power of more than 3.5 MW at more than 1 kW average output power have been demonstrated. These results could be achieved by applying extra-large mode area (XLMA) gain fibers (fiber core <100 μm) in the fiber amplifiers and using pulse shape capabilities of the seed laser, only. Stable and safe operation of the fiber laser have been shown with power densities up to 3 GW/cm² in the gain fiber. In order to protect the fiber laser to be affected by back reflections from the workpiece, a newly designed optical isolator with more than 30 dB isolation has been implemented.