Ytterbium-doped silica photonic crystal fiber laser fabricated by the nanoporous glass sintering technique

Abstract

Based on the sintering of ytterbium-doped nanoporous glass, a nonchemical vapor deposition process aimed at fabricating a large-mode area of photonic crystal fibers has been proposed for the preparation of active silica glass. With the relatively low doping concentration and boron in the silica glass as benefits, a close refractive index between the core and the cladding was obtained. The refractive index variation indicated good homogeneity of the doped fiber core. Up to 34.8 W laser output was demonstrated with the PCF laser and the slope efficiency was 71.3%. The output laser beam quality had slightly multimode behavior, with a mean M2 of 2.42.