Luis A. Zenteno

High-power double-clad fiber lasers

Rare-earth doped, laser-diode-pumped, single-mode, double-clad fiber lasers are studied in detail, experimentally and theoretically, with particular attention to properties of scaling to higher output powers. Gain saturation, spontaneous emission, fiber propagation loss, and the optimum output coupler are considered for oscillator design and laser performance. Thermal properties are investigated, including the thermal fracture limit, the decrease of quantum efficiency with increasing pump power through the temperature dependence of multiphonon decay and ion-ion energy transfer, and thermal lensing. Self-focusing and Raman effects are briefly considered. It is shown that output powers in the tens of watts range are readily feasible with available double-clad fiber lasers. >

Al/Ge co-doped large mode area fiber with high SBS threshold

We propose a novel approach of making large effective area laser fiber with higher threshold for the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) using Al/Ge co-doping in the fiber core. The increased SBS threshold is achieved by reducing the acoustic-optic overlap integral while keeping the optical refractive index profile with a step structure. The manipulation of the overlap integral is done by adjusting the relative doping level between Al(2)O(3) and GeO(2) in the core. The mechanism is validated by detailed examples of numerical modeling. An Yb-doped double clad fiber with the core co-doped with Al(2)O(3) and GeO(2) was fabricated by the OVD process. Measured acoustic velocity profile using a scanning acoustic microscope verified that the acoustic velocity in the fiber core changes with the design. An amplifier utilizing the fiber demonstrated that the proposed fiber yielded 6 dB higher SBS threshold than a fiber without using the co-doping scheme.

502 Watt, single transverse mode, narrow linewidth, bidirectionally pumped Yb-doped fiber amplifier

High power operation of narrow linewidth optical fiber amplifiers is usually limited by the onset of stimulated Brillouin scattering. In this paper, we present results demonstrating over 500 Watts of power in a single mode beam from a fiber designed to suppress stimulated Brillouin scattering through a reduction in the overlap of the optical and acoustic fields. Simulations demonstrate the potential for this fiber to achieve greater than 1000 Watts of output power.

Limit of Effective Area for Single-Mode Operation in Step-Index Large Mode Area Laser Fibers

Step-index (SI) fiber designs are commonly used in achieving large mode area (LMA) and single-mode (SM) operation in fiber lasers. These fibers can either be intrinsically single-moded fibers or few-moded fibers, which can be forced into SM operation through bending. In this paper we evaluate the limitation of the effective area for SM operation by taking into account the effects of practical constraints such as fiber bending loss, laser performance, and fiber mechanical reliability on these LMA fiber designs. It is shown that the effective area of these fibers cannot be arbitrarily scaled up with the size of the fiber core. We also use the modeling result to provide estimated upper limits to the core diameters and corresponding effective areas for conventional SI fiber designs taking into account fiber parameters that are achievable nowadays.

Single-polarization fiber with a high extinction ratio.

An elliptical-core hole assisted single-polarization fiber was designed, fabricated, and characterized. Numerical modeling based on the vectorial Maxwell equation reveals the dependence of the single-polarization bandwidth on core delta and air-hole size. Several single-polarization fibers based on this design with their single-polarization operating windows centered between 0.9 and 1.5 microm were successfully demonstrated. A correlation between fiber birefringence and single-polarization operating bandwidth is qualitatively confirmed. A single-polarization bandwidth as high as 55 nm was observed. These fibers also show very high extinction ratios of 60 dB or higher at lengths much shorter than 1 m. Other properties such as the dependence on length of the single-polarization operating window were also measured.

High bandwidth single polarization fiber with elliptical central air hole

A novel design of single polarization fiber is presented. The structure of the fiber comprises an elliptical central air hole with depressed cladding surrounding the core. Parameters that affect the performance of the single polarization fiber in terms of the location of the single polarization operating window and single polarization bandwidth are analyzed. The analysis results in the identification of a fiber design that can yield a single polarization bandwidth as high as 240 nm around 1550 nm.

Fiber designs for reducing stimulated Brillouin scattering

This paper discusses stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in optical fibers. Theoretical approach for analyzing the SBS in fiber is described. Different fiber design methods for reducing the SBS effect are presented

Highly birefringent hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber

A highly birefringent hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber is fabricated and characterized. The fiber group birefringence is found to be 0.025 at 1550 nm through wavelength scanning method and direct measurement of differential group delay.

Suppression of Raman gain in single-transverse-mode dual-hole-assisted fiber.

Measurements of backscattered Raman amplified spontaneous emission in single-mode dual-hole-assisted fiber indicate suppression of Raman gain by more than two orders of magnitude compared to SMF. These results imply that fiber lasers based on the dual-hole-assisted fiber design are effectively immune to SRS, thus enabling significant power scaling beyond current limits from a single-mode core.

Greatly enhanced modulation response of injection-locked multimode VCSELs

We report greatly enhanced modulation response of multimode vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (MM-VCSELs), for the first time, using optical injection locking. A 3-dB bandwidth of 38 GHz and 54 GHz resonance frequency are achieved using a MM-VCSEL with a 3 GHz free-running bandwidth. We show that transverse mode selection can be attained with optical injection locking through frequency and spatial detuning.