Fiber lasers and their applications [Invited]

Abstract

Fiber lasers have seen progressive developments in terms of spectral coverage and linewidth, output power, pulse energy, and ultrashort pulse width since the first demonstration of a glass fiber laser in 1964. Their applications have extended into a variety of fields accordingly. In this paper, the milestones of glass fiber laser development are briefly reviewed and recent advances of high-power continuous wave, Q-switched, mode-locked, and single-frequency fiber lasers in the 1, 1.5, 2, and 3 μm regions and their applications in such areas as industry, medicine, research, defense, and security are addressed in detail.

Highly Doped Phosphate Glass Fibers for Compact Lasers and Amplifiers: A Review

“…However, neither directly Q-switching a single-frequency fiber laser nor modulating a CW single-frequency fiber laser with an external modulator can deliver sufficient energy/power for practical applications [86]. A MOPA system is thus required to boost the power of a single-frequency low power seed laser.…”

High-energy 100-ns single-frequency all-fiber laser at 1064 nm

“…High energy, high power, single-frequency nanosecond pulsed laser sources have seen broad applications in areas such as coherent lidar, remote sensing, and nonlinear frequency conversion [1][2][3]. Laser sources in all-fiber architecture as a practical technology have been widely investigated and developed due to the advantages on compactness, ruggedness and easy thermal management [4][5][6].…”

High-power pump combiners for Tm-doped fibre lasers

“…For example, such lasers might be used in laser spec− troscopy -for detection of trace amounts of molecules and compounds (e.g., greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide) [1], medicine -due to the high water absorp− tion in this spectral range [2][3][4], optical telecommunication, materials processing, and LIDAR systems [5,6]. Fibre lasers based on Tm−doped active fibres are characterized by a very broad emission bandwidth ranging from 1.7 to 2.1 μm which allows for a tuneable operation in a wide wavelength range [7,8].…”

“…Such construction technique ma− kes the laser setup simple, robust and immune to external factors, like vibrations, contaminations, etc. [6,19]. The most important fibre components in all−fibre lasers are the pump power combiners [20].…”