YAG Single Crystal Fiber Research Articles

208 W single-frequency 1064 nm laser based on a single-crystal fiber master-oscillator power amplifier.

High-power all-solid-state continuous-wave (CW) single-frequency laser with high linear polarization is a significant source for quantum optics and precision measurement. In this Letter, a high-power linearly polarized CW single-frequency laser based on the single-crystal fiber (SCF) master-oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) is presented, in which a homemade 140 W low-noise CW single-frequency laser and a Nd:YAG SCF are firstly employed as the seed laser and the medium of the MOPA, respectively. The mode-matching between the pump laser propagated with waveguide form and the freely propagated seed laser is optimized by considering the influence of the degradations of the polarization and the beam quality. Finally, when the incident powers of the pump and seed lasers are 262.6 W and 126.3 W, respectively, the seed waist radius is optimized to 200 μm. In this case, the output power of the linearly polarized laser reaches up to 208 W, which is the highest output power, to the best of our knowledge. The presented results provide a good reference for implementing a high power and high degree of the polarization and good beam quality laser based on the SCF MOPA.

High-efficiency tandem Ho:YAG single-crystal fiber laser delivering more than 100 W output power

Abstract We report on a high-efficiency, high-power tandem Ho:YAG single-crystal fiber (SCF) laser in-band pumped by a Tm-doped fiber laser at 1907 nm. In addition to the uniform heat distribution resulting from the large surface-to-volume ratio of this fiber-like thin-crystal rod, the long gain region provided by the tandem layout of two SCFs enables high lasing efficiency and power handling capability. More than 100 W output power is achieved at 2.1 μm, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 70.5% and an optical-to-optical efficiency of 67.6%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest output power and efficiency ever reported from SCF lasers in the 2-μm spectral range.

1.7 μm LD Resonantly Pumped Tm∶YAG Single Crystal Fiber Laser

1.7 μm LD Resonantly Pumped Tm∶YAG Single Crystal Fiber Laser

High-power and high-energy coherent sources at 1.1-μm based on compact diode-end-pumped Nd:YAG crystal fiber lasers

In this work, we have reported the first Nd:YAG single crystal fiber lasers at 1.1 μm spectral region operating in continuous-wave and passively Q-switched modes. A maximum continuous-wave output power of 34.52 W is achieved and the corresponding slope efficiency with respect to pump power is 39.9 %. Using Cr4+:YAG as saturable absorber, a maximum average output power of 10.37 W is obtained during passively Q-switched laser operation. The maximum pulse peak power and single pulse energy reach approximately 103.7 kW and 1.1 mJ, respectively. In terms of diode end pumping geometry, these reported results represent the best achievements of 1.1-μm lasers, which indicate that crystal fiber has great potential in improving laser power and energy.

Optical temperature sensing characteristics of Yb3+/Nd3+ co-doped YAG single crystal fiber based on up-conversion luminescence

YAG: 5 mol%Yb3+/x mol%Nd3+(x = 0, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 7) and YAG: 2 mol%Nd3+ single crystal (SC) fluorescent materials were prepared using laser heated pedestal growth (LHPG) method. The up-conversion (UC) spectra of YAG: Yb3+/Nd3+ were recorded under 980 nm laser excitation, the results show that the optimal material was obtained at 5 mol%Yb3+/2 mol%Nd3+. An integrated YAG single crystal fiber (SCF) with end 5 mol%Yb3+/2 mol%Nd3+ co-doped was prepared by the LHPG method, the temperature-dependent characteristics were measured in the range from 348 K to 1448 K. It shows that the fluorescence intensity increases and then decreases with the increase of temperature. Fluorescence intensity ratios (FIR) in Nd3+ UC spectra, including FIR1 (4F7/2/4F5/2 → 4I9/2), FIR2 (4F9/2/4F5/2 → 4I9/2) and FIR3 (4G5/2/4F9/2 → 4I9/2), vary monotonically in temperature ranges of 348–1273 K, 523–1273 K, and 673–1273 K, respectively. The maximally absolute and relative sensitivities for FIR1 were, respectively, achieved to be 2.34 × 10−3 K−1 at 738 K and 4.61 × 10−1 %K−1 at 390 K, and these values for FIR2 were accordingly achieved to be 1.19 × 10−3 K−1 at 1273 K and 4.59 × 10−1 %K−1 at 735 K, and for FIR3 they were 4.66 × 10−3 K−1 at 1273 K and 4.09 × 10−1 %K−1 at 760 K. Therefore, we believe that the fabricated YAG: Yb3+/Nd3+ fluorescent materials have favorable application potential for optical thermometer.

High-efficiency Ho:YAG single-crystal fiber laser in-band pumped by a 1.9 μm laser diode

We report on a 10-watt-level, efficient 2 μm Ho:YAG (0.6 at.% Ho3+ doped Y3Al5O12) single crystal fiber (SCF) laser in-band pumped by a 1.9 μm laser diode. Benefiting from the high gain of the SCF and the unique propagation features of the pump and laser beams, a maximum output power of 10.77 W is achieved with T OC = 20%, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 61.8%. The higher efficiency of 64.8% and the output power of 9.8 W are obtained with T OC = 50%. Compared to the traditional bulk crystal, wave-guiding of the pump light in the SCF can extend the gain region and thus improve the laser efficiency, which provides a simple and effective method to improve the utilization rate of the pump light even for the low-brightness laser diodes.

Hundred watt level and high energy compact hybrid fiber femtosecond laser with good beam quality

A hundred watt level compact femtosecond laser system comprised of a high gain, low nonlinearity silicate glass fiber amplifier and a highly efficient Yb:YAG single-crystal fiber amplifier is demonstrated. By reducing the harmful thermal lens effect of amplifiers and optical elements, and precisely tuning dispersion of the stretcher, 110 W, 495 fs laser output at 1 MHz repetition rate and 250 μJ, 494 fs laser output at 200 kHz repetition rate are obtained. An optimized beam-quality factor (M 2) of better than 1.3 is obtained by filtering the beam with a small-aperture diaphragm. To our best knowledge, this is the first demonstration of such a hybrid femtosecond laser over 100 W and 100 μJ with good beam quality.

Large dispersion-managed broadband high-energy fiber femtosecond laser system with sub 300 fs pulses and high beam quality output

We experimentally demonstrate a high-energy sub 300 fs polarization maintaining fiber chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system. The preamplifier is a monolithic fiberized system that uses two cascaded temperature-assisted dispersion-tuning broadband chirped fiber Bragg gratings (CFBGs) with a reflected bandwidth of 20 nm as stretchers. To make full use of the stretcher to lower the system’s nonlinearity accumulation, a homemade mode locked fiber laser with a spectral width of 14.8 nm (full width at half maximum) is selected as the seeder to offer a stretched pulse width of 1.69 ns. The main amplifier is based on a one-stage simple Yb:YAG single crystal fiber amplifier with an amplified output power of 40.6 W at a repetition rate of 200 kHz, and the beam quality is conserved in a single mode beam profile with beam quality of 1.246 and 1.142 in the horizontal direction and vertical direction, respectively. During amplification, the spectral gain narrowing effect is observed. To achieve the high-speed switch of the laser, an acoustical optical modulator (AOM) is inserted before the compressor to achieve high-speed turn-on/off control. The compressor is based on a diffraction grating pair with a groove density of 1600 line/mm to offer a dispersion match with the stretcher of the CFBGs. With the CFBG’s fine-tuned capacity of second-order dispersion and higher-order dispersion, the compressed average power of 29.6 W and pulse duration of 278 fs, corresponding to a pulse energy of 148 µJ and a peak power of 532 MW with ignoring the wings of the pulse, is obtained. The beam quality is well conserved after compression, and the beam quality is 1.250 and 1.196 in the horizontal direction and vertical direction, respectively. A power fluctuation of 0.1% (root mean square) and a beam pointing drift of 8.47 µrad/°C over 8 h are realized. This high peak power and high beam quality femtosecond laser is promising in science and industrial applications.

63 W wing-pumped Tm:YAG single-crystal fiber laser.

We present a high-power continuous-wave (CW) Tm:YAG single-crystal fiber (SCF) laser wing-pumped by laser diodes at 791 nm. A maximum output power of 63.3 W is achieved at ∼ 2.01 µm, corresponding to a slope efficiency of 34.2%. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the highest power obtained from the SCF laser in the 2 µm spectral range. In addition to the wing pumping scheme, the large surface-to-volume ratio of such fiber-geometry crystalline rod with diffusion-bonded undoped YAG end caps are benefited for the spatial uniform distribution of pump intensity and thermal load, and thus improving the power scalability.

60.4 W continuous-wave single-frequency laser output from a two-stage Nd:YAG single-crystal fiber amplifier.

A Nd:YAG single-crystal fiber amplifier for the amplification of continuous-wave single-frequency laser end-pumped by a laser diode (LD) is investigated. With a two-stage amplification configuration, an output power of 60.4 W under the total incident pump power of 200 W is achieved, which is, to our knowledge, the highest power from a continuous-wave single-frequency laser achieved with a single-crystal fiber scheme. The extraction efficiency reaches 41.6% in the second amplification stage, which is comparable with Innoslab amplifiers. The beam quality factors M2 at the maximum output power in the horizontal and vertical direction are measured to be 1.51 and 1.38, respectively. The long-term power instability for 1 hour is 0.97%.

Compact Q-switched Nd:YAG single-crystal fiber laser with 794 nm laser diode pumping

A promising Nd:YAG single-crystal fiber (SCF) was successfully fabricated by the laser-heated pedestal growth method. The compact passively Q-switched laser has been realized for the first time with a 794 nm laser diode pumping. Pulsed laser performances of this SCF were investigated in detail with a flat-flat resonator. Under the absorbed pump power of 2.50 W, the peak power of 274.24 W was obtained with 19.41 ns pulse duration width and 65.94 kHz repetition rate.

Optical temperature sensing characteristics of Sm3+ doped YAG single crystal fiber based on luminescence emission

A series of YAG: x mol%Sm3+ single crystal (SC) materials, in which x is 0.3, 0.5, 1, 2, respectively, have been synthesized through laser heated pedestal growth (LHPG) method. The down-conversion luminescence properties of prepared fluorescent materials were investigated under a 405 nm laser. According to the results, 0.5 mol% was selected as the optimal doping concentration, and the integrated YAG single crystal fiber (SCF) with end Sm3+ doped was further fabricated. Then the optical temperature sensing characteristics were studied by the technique of the fluorescence intensity ratio (FIR) in detail. It shows that 4F3/2 and 4G5/2 of Sm3+ ions are thermally coupled energy levels. The FIR of the 4F3/2/4G5/2 → 6H5/2 increases monotonously as temperature rises, and its temperature measurement range can be extended to 1178 K. The maximum absolute sensitivity and maximum relative sensitivity are 3.046 × 10−4 K−1(1129 K) and 5.033 × 10−3 K−1 (500 K), respectively. Additionally, the FIRs of various emission bands from 4G5/2 → 6H5/2, 7/2 and the FIR of the emission sub-bands from 4G5/2 → 6H9/2 exhibit temperature dependence in 303–1028 K and 303–878 K, respectively. These results indicate that YAG: Sm3+ SC is a very promising high-temperature sensing material.

Development of a 67.8 W, 2.5 ps ultrafast chirped-pulse amplification system based on single-crystal fiber amplifiers.

We demonstrate a high-power, high-energy chirped-pulse amplification (CPA) system based on three Yb:YAG amplifiers and a chirped-volume Bragg grating (CVBG). With an all-fiber laser as the seed light, a Yb:YAG rod amplifier and two Yb:YAG single-crystal fiber (SCF) amplifiers as the amplification stages, a laser power of 96 W at 200 kHz repetition rate corresponding to a pulse energy of 0.48 mJ has been generated. The stability of different output power has been measured and compared. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report on a stable 100 W-level laser with sub-mJ pulse energy based on SCF. The beam quality M2 of different output lasers has also been measured, which is below 1.55 when the output power is 92 W. The amplified laser is seeded into the CVBG to be compressed, and a compression efficiency of 0.724 has been obtained with an output power of 67.8 W and pulse duration of 2.5 ps. The ultrafast CPA system delivering high pulse energy (sub-mJ) with hundreds of kHz repetition rate is expected to be used as the driving source of high-flux high-harmonic generation after further compression.

Amplification of radially polarized ultra-short pulsed radiation to average output powers exceeding 250 W in a compact single-stage Yb:YAG single-crystal fiber amplifier

A simple and compact single-stage Yb:YAG single-crystal fiber amplifier was setup to amplify 784 fs long seed pulses to an output energy of 6 upmuJ and an average output power of 290 W. The experimental results are verified by numerical models to estimate the limitations of the SCF technology with regards to beam quality and average output power.

High-energy femtosecond laser system based on a fiber laser seeder, Yb:YAG single crystal fiber and chirped volume Bragg grating

A high-energy chirped pulse amplification system based on a Yb doped fiber seeder, two-stage single crystal fiber (SCF) amplifier with a simple single-pass structure is demonstrated in this work. An amplified power of 52.2 W with a beam quality of less than 1.3 at 200 kHz is obtained, to our best knowledge, this is the highest power obtained with a single-pass amplification structure of the SCF with the energy of hundreds of microjoules. An excellent power stability of 0.32% is obtained. Dispersion between the chirped fiber Bragg grating (CFBG) stretcher and the chirped volume Bragg grating compressor is matched via the use of a self-made temperature tuning device of CFBG. As a result, a pulse duration of 740 fs and a compressed power of 31.4 W are obtained at a repetition rate of 200 kHz. In order to assess the influence of pulse duration induced by the nonlinearity during the amplification and increase the output pulse energy,the repetition rate of the self-made fiber seeder is changed to 100 kHz. A compressed power of 28.4 W and a pulse width of 858 fs are obtained, corresponding to a pulse energy of 284 µJ and a peak power of 331 MW. This compact and high-energy femtosecond laser system will find various applications in both scientific research and industrial implementation.

21 W, 105 μJ Regenerative Amplifier Based on Yb:YAG SCF and NALM Fiber Oscillator

We present a regenerative amplifier (RA) based on Yb:YAG single-crystal fiber (SCF) and nonlinear amplifying loop mirror (NALM) fiber oscillator. The home-made all-fiber NALM oscillator is constructed with polarization maintaining (PM) fibers for improved environmental stability, delivering a stable pulse train. The seed is directly amplified in a single stage without using CPA technique. 21 W, $105~\mu \text{J}$ , 2.4 ps at 200 kHz repetition rate with beam quality of 1.3 has been achieved. A remarkable optical gain of 57.4 dB is obtained with a seed injection of 190 pJ. Further increase in average power is expected.

41.8 W output power, 200 kHz repetition rate ultra-fast laser based on Yb:YAG single crystal fiber(SCF)amplifier

We demonstrate a high repetition rate, high energy chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system based on single crystal fiber (SCF) amplifier. With home-made all-fiber laser as the seed laser and Yb:YAG rod, SCF as the amplification gain medium, an output power of 61.8 W at 200 kHz repetition rate has been obtained. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest power based on SCF at hundreds of kHz repetition rate. The measured M2 values are approximately 1.241 in the horizontal and 1.186 in the vertical direction. The spectrum width is 3.8 nm, which support Fourier transform-limited pulse duration of 411 fs. An average power of 41.8 W with pulse duration of 1.5 ps has been obtained after the chirped volume Bragg grating (CVBG) compressor, which will be compressed to hundreds of fs with accurate chirp compensation.

72.3 W 1064 nm Nd:YAG Single Crystal Fiber Laser and Intracavity Double Frequency Generation

As a bridge between crystal and fiber, the single crystal fiber (SCF) can combine the advantages of the two materials and show great potential in high-power lasers. In this paper, we select a Nd:YAG SCF as the gain medium in a diode-end-pumped linear cavity. The Nd:YAG SCF with the dimensions of ∅ = 1 mm × 50 mm was manufactured using the micro-pulling-down technique. At an incident pump power of 153.0 W, the maximum output power of the 1064 nm laser was 72.3 W. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest power obtained in Nd:YAG SCF lasers. In addition, using a second-type phase-matched KTP crystal, the 10 W continuous wave green laser was obtained with an intracavity double-frequency structure.

35 W continuous-wave Ho:YAG single-crystal fiber laser

We report on a high-power Ho:YAG single-crystal fiber (SCF) laser inband pumped by a high-brightness Tm-fiber laser at 1908 nm. The Ho:YAG SCF grown by the micro-pulling-down technique exhibits a propagation loss of $0.05\pm 0.005~\text{cm}^{-1}$ at $2.09~\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ . A continuous-wave output power of 35.2 W is achieved with a slope efficiency of 42.7%, which is to the best of our knowledge the highest power ever reported from an SCF-based laser in the 2 $\unicode[STIX]{x03BC}\text{m}$ spectral range.

采用解析法对Nd:YAG单晶光纤的温度场研究

采用解析法对Nd:YAG单晶光纤的温度场研究