We demonstrate an all-fiber 7x1 signal combiner for incoherent laser beam combining. This is a potential key component for reaching several kW of stabile laser output power. The combiner couples the output from 7 single-mode (SM) fiber lasers into a single multi-mode (MM) fiber. The input signal fibers have a core diameter of 17 µm and the output MM fiber has a core diameter of 100 µm. In a tapered section light gradually leaks out of the SM fibers and is captured by a surrounding fluorine-doped cladding. The combiner is tested up to 2.5 kW of combined output power and only a minor increase in device temperature is observed. At an intermediate power level of 600 W a beam parameter product (BPP) of 2.22 mm x mrad is measured, corresponding to an M 2 value of 6.5. These values are approaching the theoretical limit dictated by brightness conservation.

High power Yb doped fiber laser sources are beside CO 2 -and disk lasers one of the working horses of industrial laser applications. Due to their inherently given robustness, scalability and high efficiency, fiber laser sources are best suited to fulfill the requirements of modern industrial laser applications in terms of power and beam quality.Pumping Yb doped single-mode fiber lasers at 976nm is very efficient. Thus, high power levels can be realized avoiding limiting nonlinear effects like SRS. However the absorption band of Yb doped glass around 976nm is very narrow. Therefore, one has to consider the wavelength shift of the diode lasers used for pumping.The output spectrum of passively cooled diode lasers is mainly defined by the applied current and by the heat sink temperature. Furthermore the overall emission line width of a high power pump source is dominated by the large number of needed diode laser emitters, each producing an individual spectrum.Even though it is possible to operate multi-kW cw single-mode fiber lasers with free running diode laser pumps, wavelength stabilizing techniques for diode lasers (e.g. volume holographic gratings, VHG) can be utilized in future fiber laser sources to increase the output power level while keeping the energy consumption constant.To clarify the benefits of wavelength stabilized diode lasers with integrated VHG for wavelength locking the performance of a dual side pumped fiber oscillator is discussed in this article. For comparison, different pumping configurations consisting of stabilized and free-running diode lasers are presented.

The Performance of High Power Disk Lasers and Fiber Lasers along with their rapid development to the high power cw regime have been of great interest throughout the last decade.Both technologies are still in the focus of several conferences, workshops, and papers and represent the "state-of-the-art" of industrial high power solid state lasers for material processing. As both laser concepts are considered to be the leading 1 µm light-source, this presentation presents an objective and fair comparison of the two different technologies from a manufacturer who pursued both. From the geometry of the active material, through the resonator design, cooling regime, and pumping method to the point of beam quality and power scaling, the different approaches associated with the advantages, challenge and limits of each technology will be discussed. Based on ROFIN's substantial industrial experience with both laser concepts, an outlook into future trends and chances, especially linked to fiber laser, will be given.

We have demonstrated a linearly polarized cw all-in-fiber oscillator providing 1 kW of output power and a polarization extinction ratio (PER) of up to 21.7 dB. The design of the laser oscillator is simple and consists of an Ytterbium-doped polarization maintaining large mode area (PLMA) fiber and suitable fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) in matching PLMA fibers. The oscillator has nearly diffraction-limited beam quality (M² < 1.2). Pump power is delivered via a high power 6+1:1 pump coupler. The slope efficiency of the laser is 75 %. The electro/optical efficiency of the complete laser system is ~30 % and hence in the range of Rofin's cw non-polarized fiber lasers.Choosing an adequate bending diameter for the Yb-doped PLMA fiber, one polarization mode as well as higher order modes are sufficiently supressed 1 . Resulting in a compact and robust linearly polarized high power single mode laser without external polarizing components. Linearly polarized lasers are well established for one dimensional cutting or welding applications. Using beam shaping optics radially polarized laser light can be generated to be independent from the angle of incident to the processing surface. Furthermore, high power linearly polarized laser light is fundamental for nonlinear frequency conversion of nonlinear materials.

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