Chip-Scale, High Power Microstructure Fiber Laser
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Chip-Scale, High Power Microstructure Fiber Laser Nasser Peyghambarian, Axel Schülzgen, Masud Mansuripur, Jerome V. Moloney,1 Tiequn Qiu, Yushi Kaneda, Pavel Polynkin, Li Li, Jianfeng Wu, Alex Polynkin, Valery L. Temyanko, Arash Mafi,1 Shibin Jiang,2 Christine Spiegelberg, 2 Arturo Chavez, 2 Jihong Geng, 2 and Tao Luo 2 Optical Sciences Center, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 1 Arizona Center for Mathematical Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 2 NP Photonics, Inc., 9030 S. Rita Rd., Tucson, AZ 85747 ABSTRACT Compact, robust, high power fiber lasers have been demonstrated. In fiber lasers of only a few cm length we obtained up to 10 W of cw output power, diffraction limited beam profiles at 4 W cw operation, 1.6 W output with single frequency operation, and more than 150 mW output with a spectral linewidth of a few kHz. The potential of active microstructured fibers for further improvements in fiber laser performance has been shown. We also demonstrated Q-switching and mode-locking of these compact fiber lasers. INTRODUCTION Development of high power fiber lasers is currently a hot topic [1]. Most high power fiber lasers use silica fibers with lengths of several tens of meters. It is impractical for these fiber lasers to be integrated into a very compact device and for such applications centimeter-long fiber lasers will be needed. Only short and compact fiber lasers can be integrated on a chip or small board and utilized for interconnection or in array configuration. In addition, when single frequency output is needed, long fiber lasers become unsuitable due to difficulties in selecting one frequency from their closely spaced longitudinal modes. Short fiber lasers with cavity-length of only several centimeters provide single-mode and single frequency operation. Development of short-length fiber lasers presents two major challenges: (1) there need to be sufficient pump absorption, and (2) the doping level of active ions needs to be increased to provide enough gain. The active volume of single mode fiber laser is necessarily very small, typically about 1-mm3 for 10 meters of fiber. The solubility of rare-earth ions in the glass host is limited. For these reasons, short-length fiber lasers have been generally core-pumped using rather low-power single-mode laser diodes. Output powers of cm-long phosphate glass fiber lasers have been typically in the 100-mW range [2]. Narrow-linewidth single frequency short fiber lasers have applications in remote sensing and as seeder lasers for amplifiers and beam combining systems. To produce Watt-level cw fiber laser cladding-pumped by multi-mode source while reducing the active fiber length to the centimeter scale, high doping concentration, large core area, and optimized cavity reflectivity are essential. By solving these problems, we were able to boost the output power from cm-long fiber lasers by more than one order of magnitude and achieved cw output powers of beyond 1 W per cm of active fiber. We designed, fabricated, and tested several fiber desi
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