High-power Random Fiber Laser Research Articles

Pump scheme optimization of an incoherently pumped high-power random fiber laser

Optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) is one of the most significant parameters for the performance characterization of random fiber lasers (RFLs) and their application potentiality in sensing and telecommunication. An effective way to improve the OSNR of RFLs is pump scheme optimization, for example, employing a temporally stable source as the pump. In this paper, the output performance of an incoherently pumped RFL dependence on the pump bandwidth has been investigated both in experiment and theory. It is found that a high-OSNR RFL can be achieved with broadband amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) source pumping, and a relatively broad pump bandwidth can also help suppress the spectral broadening while maintaining an ultra-high spectral purity. By optimizing the pump bandwidth to ∼10 nm, maximum OSNR of ∼39 dB (corresponding to a spectral purity of ∼99.96%) with more than 99 W output power can be obtained. Moreover, for the pump bandwidth of 0.6–40 nm, the spectral purity can reach as high as >99% with the pump power ranging from ∼85 to ∼117 W. In addition, with the aid of theoretical simulation based on a modified power balance model, we find that the increment of pump bandwidth can decrease the effective Raman gain coefficient, further influencing the gain characteristics, nonlinear effects, and eventually the output performance. This work provides new insight into the influence of the pump characteristics on the output performance of incoherently pumped RFLs.

An Efficient 4-kW Level Random Fiber Laser Based on a Tandem-Pumping Scheme

In this letter, we presented a monolithic high-power random fiber laser (RFL) with a tandem-pumping scheme. The RFL seed centered at 1064 nm was pumped by a 1018-nm fiber laser and reached an output power of 8.66 W. After two amplifiers, the seed was amplified to 4020 W, and the 3-dB width of laser spectrum was broadened from 0.78 nm to 0.99 nm. To increase the efficiency of the 4-kW laser, a specially designed high absorption coefficient (0.6 dB/m @ 1018 nm) 30/250- $\mu \text{m}$ Yb-doped fiber and high-brightness 1018-nm pump laser were adopted. The optical-to-optical efficiency could reach as high as 88.5%. No obvious mode instability was found during the experiment. Furthermore, with the same amplifier stage, we have also built another 4-kW level fiber laser seeded by an oscillator consisting of a pair of fiber Bragg gratings. The comparison of the experimental results showed that the high-power laser based on the RFL seed would have a better control on spectral broadening.

Spectrum-agile hundred-watt-level high-power random fiber laser enabled by watt-level tunable optical filter

Through high-fidelity numerical modeling and careful system-parameter design, we demonstrate the spectral manipulation of a hundred-watt-level high-power random fiber laser (RFL) by employing a watt-level tunable optical filter. Consequently, a >100-W RFL with the spectrum-agile property is achieved. The central wavelength can be continuously tuned with a range of ∼20 nm, and the tuning range of the full width at half maximum linewidth, which is closely related to the central wavelength, covers ∼1.1 to ∼2.7 times of the minimum linewidth.

Tandem pumping architecture enabled high power random fiber laser with near-diffraction-limited beam quality

In this contribution, we present the tandem pumping avenue leveraged performance scaling of random fiber laser to record 3 kW level with inherent temporal stability and near-diffraction-limited beam quality. The high power system employs a four-stage master oscillator power amplifier chain. The master oscillator is a half-opened cavity structured random distributed feedback fiber laser centered at 1080 nm and pumped by incoherent amplified spontaneous emission source. Narrowband random laser seed is selected by employing a spectral filtering module with a maximum output power of 1.08 W, full width at half maximum linewidth of 0.47 nm and spectral optical-signal-to-noise ratio of about 42 dB. As to the main amplification stage, for given 104 W pre-amplified random laser seed and 3.61 kW pump laser, an ultimate output power of 3.03 kW can be obtained, corresponding to an optical-to-optical conversion efficiency of 81.05%. Nearly single-transverse-mode amplified random laser can be achieved even at full power level for inherent high thermal modal instability threshold enabled by tandem pumping and inducing bending loss for high-order transverse-mode. Further performance scaling of this high power random laser system, such as power boosting, operation wavelength tuning and linewidth alteration, is the next goal.

Tapered fiber based high power random laser.

We propose a novel high power random fiber laser (RFL) based on tapered fiber. It can overcome the power scaling limitation of RFL while maintaining good beam quality to a certain extent. An output power of 26.5 W has been achieved in a half-open cavity with one kilometer long tapered fiber whose core diameter gradually changes from 8 μm to 20 μm. The steady-state light propagation equations have been modified by taking into account the effective core area to demonstrate the tapered RFL through numerical calculations. The numerical model effectively describes the power characteristics of the tapered fiber based RFL, and both the calculating and experimental results show higher power exporting potential compared with the conventional single mode RFL.

High Power Random Fiber Laser With Short Cavity Length: Theoretical and Experimental Investigations

In this paper, we make a comprehensive study on a highly efficient half-open cavity design for high power random fiber laser (RFL). With the theoretical analysis, we optimize the cavity's fiber length for getting higher output power within the scheme, i.e., shorter fiber length is preferred for efficiently harvesting the first order random lasing at the open end of the cavity. As the verification of the theory, we experimentally demonstrate a high output power (7 W), highly efficient (70% optical conversion efficiency) RFL working at 1140 nm, using 10 W 1090 nm laser as the pump source and only 1 km standard single-mode fiber as the distributed cavity.