High power fiber lasers/amplifiers in the 1550nm spectral region have not scaled as rapidly as Yb-, Tm-, or Ho-doped fibers. This is primarily due to the low gain of the erbium ion. To overcome the low pump absorption, Yb is typically added as a sensitizer. Although this helps the pump absorption, it also creates a problem with parasitic lasing of the Yb ions under strong pumping conditions, which generally limits output power. Other pump schemes have shown high efficiency through resonant pumping of erbium only without the need for Yb as a sensitizer [1][2]. Although this can enable higher power scaling due to a decrease in the thermal loading, resonant pumping methods require long fiber lengths due to pump bleaching, which may limit the power scaling which can be achieved for single frequency output. By using an Er:Yb fiber and pumping in the minima of the Yb pump absorption at 940nm, we have been able to simultaneously generate high power, single frequency output at 1560nm while suppressing the 1-micron ASE and enabling higher efficiency compared to pumping at the absorption peak at 976nm. We have demonstrated single frequency amplification (540Hz linewidth) to 207W average output power with 49.3% optical efficiency (50.5% slope efficiency) in an LMA Er:Yb fiber. We believe this is the highest reported efficiency from a high power 9XXnm pumped Er:Yb-doped fiber amplifier. This is significantly more efficient that the best-reported efficiency for high power Er:Yb doped fibers, which, to-date, has been limited to ~41% slope efficiency [3].

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Compact, high power blue light in the 470-490nm region is difficult to generate due to the lack of laser sources which are easily convertible (through parametric processes) to those wavelengths. By using a pulsed Tm-doped fiber laser as a pump source for a 2-stage second harmonic generation (SHG) scheme, we have generated ~2W of 486.5nm light at 500kHz pulse repetition frequency (PRF). To our knowledge, this is the highest PRF and output power achieved in the blue region based on a frequency converted, monolithic fiber laser. This pump laser is a pulsed Tm-doped fiber laser/amplifier which generates 12.8W of 1946nm power at 500kHz PRF with diffraction-limited output from a purely single-mode fiber. The output from this laser is converted to 973nm through second harmonic generation (SHG). The 973nm is then converted to 486.5nm via another SHG stage. This architecture operates with very low peak power, which can be challenging from a nonlinear conversion standpoint. However, the low peak power enables the use of a single-mode monolithic fiber amplifier without undergoing nonlinear effects in the fiber. This also eliminates the need for novel fiber designs, large-mode area fiber, or free-space coupling to rod-type amplifiers, improving reliability and robustness of the laser source. Higher power and conversion efficiency are possible through the addition of Tm-doped fiber amplification stages as well as optimization of the nonlinear conversion process and nonlinear materials. In this paper, we discuss the laser layout, results, and challenges with generating blue light using a low peak power approach.

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