Direct amplification of ultrashort pulses in µ-pulling down Yb:YAG single crystal fibers

New Materials for Short-Pulse Amplifiers

“…On the other hand, very promising architectures closed to fibres but involving crystalline matrices (so called single crystal fibbers) are also very promising in terms of high power and pulse duration preservation. In fact, very recently fibre-crystal amplifier has demonstrated [41] 330 fs pulses with an average power of 12 W. This is the shortest pulse duration ever produced by an Yb:YAG amplifier. Moreover, the gain in the single crystal fibre can reach a value as high as x30 in a simple double pass configuration.…”

“…In fact, another interesting point to note concerns the parallel progress done on geometries specifically developed for high power lasers based on crystals. These architectures involving crystals with a high surface/volume ration such as thin-disk [37][38][39], slab [40] and crystaline-fiber [41] have allowed strong improvements in the Yb:YAG amplifier performances especially in terms of power. For example the INOSLAB experiment has allows record of average power for femtosecond pulses with an average output power of 1.1 kW, a peak power of 80 MW, and a 615 fs [40] pulse width overwhelming then the fibre based amplifiers previous record [42].…”