Powerful 2-μm all-fiber laser sources pumped by Raman fiber lasers

Abstract

We present novel and powerful pump schemes for fiber laser sources operating near 2 μm, which employing high power Raman fiber lasers (RFLs) to provide sufficient pump light. Firstly, we demonstrate a Tm-doped fiber laser (TDFL) pumped by two RFLs at 1173 nm. The output power of the TDFL reached 96 W with slope efficiency of 0.42, and the central wavelength located at 1943.3 nm. This is the first TDFL with 100 W-level output power pumped by RFLs around Tm 3+ ions' ~1200 nm absorption band. Secondly, we demonstrate a Ho-doped fiber laser (HDFL) employing a 1150 nm RFL as pump source. The 1150 nm RFL provided 110 W pump power and the output power of the HDFL reached 42 W with slope efficiency of 0.37. The lasing wavelength covered from 2046.8 nm to 2049.5 nm with optical signal-to-noise ratio more than 30 dB. This is the first HDFL pumped by a 1150 nm RFL and the highest output power achieved at this pump band. In the last, we present a high power Ho-doped fiber (HDF) superfluorescent source (SS) pumped by a 1150 nm RFL. The SS's output power reached 1.5 W, and the full width at half maximum was about 30 nm. This is the highest output power achieved in HDF as far as we know. The results above indicate promising and powerful pump schemes to achieve higher power output in fiber lasers near 2 μm, which also can be further improved by optimizing the parameters of the sources.

High-Power Broadly Tunable 3-<named-content content-type="math" xlink:type="simple"> <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="TeX">$\mu\hbox{m}$</tex-math></inline-formula></named-content> Fiber Laser for the Measurement of Optical Fiber Loss

“…To date, the highest output power reported in such systems has been 2.5 W [10] generated with slope efficiencies of up to 32% [11]. In recent work, the use of a Yb 3þ -Raman fiber laser based system to shift the 980 nm output of commercially available high powered diodes to 1150 nm has been shown to be capable of achieving 110 W of output power [12]. Furthermore, the use of a Yb 3þ -Raman system as a single mode pump-source for the Ho 3þ system has been shown to achieve 3.4 W of 2.9 m output power [13].…”