Yb-free Er-doped all-fiber amplifier cladding-pumped at 976 nm with output power in excess of 100 W

Leonid V. Kotov; Mikhail E. Likhachev; Mikhail M. Bubnov; Oleg I. Medvedkov; Mikhail V. Yashkov; Alexei N. Guryanov; Sébastien Février; Jérôme Lhermite; Eric Cormier

doi:10.1117/12.2038503

7 March 2014 Yb-free Er-doped all-fiber amplifier cladding-pumped at 976 nm with output power in excess of 100 W

Leonid V. Kotov, Mikhail E. Likhachev, Mikhail M. Bubnov, Oleg I. Medvedkov, Mikhail V. Yashkov, Alexei N. Guryanov, Sébastien Février, Jérôme Lhermite, Eric Cormier

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 8961, Fiber Lasers XI: Technology, Systems, and Applications; 89610X (2014) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2038503
Event: SPIE LASE, 2014, San Francisco, California, United States

Abstract

Power scaling of Yb-free Er-doped fiber lasers is extremely challenging due to low Er ion absorption cross-section and growth of unbleachable loss at high Er concentrations because of clustering effects. Hence, usual double-clad Er-doped fibers suffer from low efficiency. We present an efficient high power all-fiber amplifier based on our newly developed Yb-free Er-doped fiber. Proper core composition and relatively low Er3+ concentration mitigates clustering effect. Furthermore, large single-mode core diameter of 34 um increases the pump absorption and decreases the fiber length. Our amplifier consists in the specialty Er fiber pumped through a commercially available pump combiner by means of 6 pigtailed multimode diodes (D=105 um, NA=0.15, input pump power of 275W). The signal source is a low power continuous wave fiber laser spliced to the amplifier. Therefore we built truly all-fiber laser without any free space coupling. We obtained 103 W of amplified signal limited only by the available pump power. Pump conversion efficiency is as high as 37 %. To the best of our knowledge this is the highest power ever demonstrated for Yb-free Er-doped lasers pumped at 976 nm. This power level is similar to that obtained in resonantly pumped Er-doped fiber lasers.

Citation Download Citation

Leonid V. Kotov, Mikhail E. Likhachev, Mikhail M. Bubnov, Oleg I. Medvedkov, Mikhail V. Yashkov, Alexei N. Guryanov, Sébastien Février, Jérôme Lhermite, and Eric Cormier "Yb-free Er-doped all-fiber amplifier cladding-pumped at 976 nm with output power in excess of 100 W", Proc. SPIE 8961, Fiber Lasers XI: Technology, Systems, and Applications, 89610X (7 March 2014); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2038503

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available