Study of dopant concentrations on thermally induced mode instability in high-power fiber amplifiers

Abstract

The dependence of mode instabilities (MIs) on ytterbium dopant concentrations in high-power fiber amplifiers has been investigated. It is theoretically shown that, by only varying the fiber length to maintain the same total small-signal pump absorption, the MI threshold is independent of dopant concentration. MI thresholds of gain fibers with ytterbium dopant concentrations of 5.93 × 1025 m−3 and 1.02 × 1026 m−3 have been measured which exhibit similar MI thresholds and agree with the theoretical results. The result indicates that heavy doping of active fiber can be adopted to suppress nonlinear effects without decreasing the MI threshold. This provides a method of maximizing the power output of fiber laser, taking into account the stimulated Brillouin scattering, stimulated Raman Scattering, and MI thresholds simultaneously.