High-power Ultrafast Fiber Laser Research Articles

Multi-watt picosecond 1.7 µm Tm-doped fiber laser amplification system.

We report on a multi-watt, high-repetition-rate picosecond 1.7 µm Tm-doped fiber (TDF) laser amplification system. The seed oscillator is a figure-9 passively mode-locked TDF laser, which delivers a pulse train with a center wavelength of 1738nm and a fundamental repetition rate of ∼85 MHz. After a pre-amplifier and two stages of TDF amplifiers, the output power can be amplified to 5.2 W at a pump power of 10 W, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 52.1%. The output pulse duration is 33.87 ps and the pulse energy is 61 nJ. These results demonstrated that it is an effective method for achieving high-power ultrafast fiber laser source at 1.7 µm waveband, which would be a promising candidate for diverse applications such as polymer welding, bioimaging, mid-infrared laser generation and medical applications.

Pulses of 32 mJ and 158 fs at 20-kHz repetition rate from a spatiotemporally combined fiber laser system.

A high-energy, high-power ultrafast fiber laser system based on spatiotemporal coherent combination is presented. Bursts of eight subsequent chirped-pulse amplification (CPA)-stretched pulses are amplified simultaneously in 16 parallel ytterbium-doped rod-type amplifiers. After spatial and temporal coherent combination of the total 128 amplified pulse replicas into a single pulse, it is compressed in a partially protective-gas-filled CPA compressor. Finally, nearly Fourier-transform-limited pulses with an energy of 32 mJ and a duration of 158 fs are emitted with a repetition rate of 20 kHz and a close to diffraction-limited beam quality.

Spectral manipulation in a high-power ultrafast fiber laser system generating ultrashort pulses with GHz repetition rate

Spectral manipulation in a high-power ultrafast fiber laser system generating ultrashort pulses with GHz repetition rate

High-power ultrafast fiber lasers for materials processing

Abstract State-of-the-art fiber-laser systems can deliver femtosecond pulses at average powers beyond the kilowatt level and multi-mJ pulse energies by employing advanced large-mode-area fiber designs, chirped-pulse amplification, and the coherent combination of parallel fiber amplifiers. By using sophisticated coherent phase control, one or even several output ports can be modulated at virtually arbitrary power levels and switching speeds. In addition, an all-fiber setup for GHz-burst generation is described allowing to access an even wider range of laser parameters. The combination of all these approaches together with the robustness, efficiency, and excellent beam quality inherent to fiber-laser technology has the potential to strongly improve existing materials-processing applications.

Development of High-Power Ultrafast Fiber Laser Technology

Development of High-Power Ultrafast Fiber Laser Technology

High-power erbium-doped fiber laser with a carbon nanotubes-doped sol-gel glass mode-locker

• In this study, for the first time, a carbon nanotube-doped sol-gel glass composite absorber is fabricated using a low-temperature sol-gel method. • The main component of the sol-gel glass is compact amorphous inorganic silicon-dioxide, which has high laser-damage threshold. Generally, broadband absorbers has much non-saturable loss and low laser damage threshold, which limits the average output power of the fiber lasers mode locked by broadband absorbers. Exceptions are the absorbers in evanescent wave mode locking, in which way only weak laser passes through the absorber section. However, evanescent wave mode locking method needs to change the original structure of the fiber. Most of the commercial fiber-lasers adopt face-to-face passive mode-locking. Therefore, it is important to increase the damage threshold of the broadband absorbers. In this study, for the first time, a single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT)-doped sol-gel glass composite absorber is fabricated using a low-temperature sol-gel method. The main component of the sol-gel glass is compact amorphous inorganic silicon-dioxide, which has high laser-damage threshold. The SWNT-doped sol-gel glass is integrated into the erbium-doped fiber (EDF) laser and mode-locking occurs at 1559 nm. The shortest pulse duration is 456 fs, and the maximum average output power is 110.65 mW. Compared to most EDF lasers based on broadband absorbers, the average output power is one of the highest values. The results indicate that encapsulating absorber in the inorganic sol-gel matrix is a promising method for fabricating high power ultrafast fiber laser type absorbers.

23 mJ high-power fiber CPA system using electro-optically controlled divided-pulse amplification.

The pulse-energy scaling technique electro-optically controlled divided-pulse amplification is implemented in a high-power ultrafast fiber laser system based on coherent beam combination. A fiber-integrated front end and a multipass-cell-based back end allow for a small footprint and a modular implementation. Bursts of eight pulses are amplified parallel in up to 12 ytterbium-doped large-pitch fiber amplifiers. Subsequent spatiotemporal coherent combination of the 96 total amplified pulse replicas to a single pulse results in a pulse energy of 23 mJ at an average power of 674 W, compressible to a pulse duration of 235 fs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest pulse energy ever accomplished with a fiber chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) system.

2 μm mode-locking laser performances of sol-gel-fabricated large-core Tm-doped silica fiber

High-power ultrafast fiber lasers operating at the 2 μm wavelength are extremely desirable for material processing, laser surgery, and nonlinear optics. Here we fabricated large-core (LC) double-cladding Tm-doped silica fiber via the sol-gel method. The sol-gel-fabricated Tm-doped silica (SGTS) fiber had a large core diameter of 30 μm with a high refractive index homogeneity (Δn=2×10−4). With the newly developed LC SGTS fiber as the gain fiber, high-power mode-locking was realized. By using a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) as a mode locker, the LC SGTS fiber oscillator generated mode-locked pulses with an average output power as high as 1.0 W and a pulse duration of 23.9 ps at the wavelength of 1955.0 nm. Our research results show that the self-developed LC Tm-doped silica fiber via the sol-gel method is a promising gain fiber for generating high-power ultrafast lasers in the 2 μm spectral region.

203 W all-polarization-maintaining picosecond thulium-doped all-fiber laser

High-power ultrafast fiber lasers are important sources for a number of applications including material processing, pump source for optical parametric oscillator, and supercontinuum generation. Ultrafast thulium-doped fiber lasers, which extend the wavelength range of fiber lasers from 1.8 to 2.1 m, have rapidly developed in the last several years and the average output power of the ultrafast thulium-doped fiber amplifiers has reached a hundredwatt level. The broad and smooth gain spectrum of thulium-doped fiber makes it a well-suited gain medium for generating the ultrashort laser pulses and broad wavelength tunability. However, previous reports on ultrafast thulium-doped fiber lasers and amplifiers were related to non-PM fiber configuration. These ultrafast thulium-doped fiber lasers and amplifiers may suffer the environmental instability, which means that these fiber sources are sensitive to externally-induced changes, like significant temperature variations and mechanical perturbations which will influence the fiber birefringence property. An effective method to eliminate this environmental instability is to build an all-PM, thulium-doped all-fiber MOPA configuration where the light polarizes only along the slow or fast axis in the PM fiber and PM-fiber components. Here, we demonstrate a high-power all-polarization-maintaining picosecond thulium-doped all-fiber master-oscillator power-amplifier (MOPA) system. The linearly-polarized thulium-doped all-fiber MOPA yields 203 W of average output power at central wavelength of 1985 nm with a polarization extinction ratio of 15 dB. The pulse duration of 15 ps at 611.5 MHz repetition-rate results in a peak-power of 22 kW in the final thulium-doped fiber power amplifier. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest average output power ever reported for a picosecond-pulsed thulium-doped all-fiber laser at 2 m wavelength. Furthermore, high-power linearly-polarized thulium-doped fiber laser with compact and simple design is greatly demanded for a variety of applications, such as coherent polarization beam combination, and frequency conversion in nonlinear crystals.

High-power ultrafast fiber laser systems

The recent demonstration of rare-earth-doped fiber lasers with a continuous wave output power well above the kilowatt level with diffraction-limited beam quality has proven that fiber lasers constitute a power-scalable solid-state laser concept. To generate intense pulses from a fiber, several fundamental limitations have to be overcome. Nevertheless, novel experimental strategies and fiber designs offer an enormous potential toward laser systems with high average powers and high pulse energies. This paper reviews the challenges, achievements, and perspectives of ultrashort pulse generation and amplification in fibers.