Pankaj Kadwani

High-power widely tunable thulium fiber lasers

Applications requiring long-range atmospheric propagation are driving the development of high-power thulium fiber lasers. We report on the performance of two different laser configurations for high-power tunable thulium fiber lasers: one is a single oscillator utilizing a volume Bragg grating for wavelength stabilization; the other is a master oscillator power amplifier system with the oscillator stabilized and made tunable by a diffraction grating. Each configuration provides >150 W of average power, >50% slope efficiency, narrow output linewidth, and >100 nm tunability in the wavelength range around 2 μm.

1 μJ, sub-500 fs chirped pulse amplification in a Tm-doped fiber system

We demonstrate a Tm-doped fiber laser system producing ~300 fs pulses with 1 μJ energy, corresponding to peak powers greater than 3 MW. Pulses of 150 fs with 30 nm spectral bandwidth and 3 nJ pulse energy are generated in a Raman-soliton self-frequency shift amplifier, then stretched to ~160 ps using a chirped Bragg grating. The 60 MHz oscillator repetition rate is reduced to 100 kHz using an electro-optic modulator. After a single-mode fiber preamplifier and a large-mode-area fiber power amplifier, pulses were compressed using a folded Treacy grating setup to below 500 fs with up to 1 μJ pulse energy. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest energy yet demonstrated as well as the first demonstration of peak powers exceeding 1 MW from a Tm:fiber laser system.

Lasing in thulium-doped polarizing photonic crystal fiber

We describe lasing of a thulium-doped polarizing photonic crystal fiber. A 4 m long fiber with 50 μm diameter core, 250 μm diameter cladding, and d/Λ ratio of 0.18 was pumped with a 793 nm diode and produced a polarized output with a polarization extinction ratio (PER) of 15 dB and an M(2) of <1.15. An intracavity polarizer and half-wave plate minimally increased the PER to 16 dB. The output power had 35% slope efficiency relative to the absorbed pump power. The maximum cw output power was limited to 4 W due to the quantum defect heating of the fiber.

High peak-power mid-infrared ZnGeP₂ optical parametric oscillator pumped by a Tm:fiber master oscillator power amplifier system.

We report on the utilization of a novel Tm:fiber laser source for mid-IR ZnGeP2 (ZGP) optical parametric oscillator (OPO) pumping. The pump laser is built in a master oscillator power-amplifier configuration delivering up to 3.36 W of polarized, diffraction limited output power with 7 ns pulse duration and 4 kHz repetition rate. This corresponds to a peak power of ∼121  kW and a pulse energy of ∼0.84  mJ. With this source, we generated 27.9 kW of total mid-IR peak power in a doubly resonant oscillator (DRO) configuration. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the highest ever demonstrated mid-IR peak power from a directly Tm:fiber laser pumped ZGP OPO. Moreover, a DRO output with about 284 μJ of total mid-IR pulse energy was demonstrated using 100 ns pump pulses. The wavelength tuning of the idler was extended to 6 μm with lower output power in another OPO experiment.

Amplification of nanosecond pulses to megawatt peak power levels in Tm 3+ -doped photonic crystal fiber rod

We report amplification of sub-10-100 ns pulses with repetition rates from 1 to 20 kHz in a rod-type thulium-doped photonic crystal fiber with 80 μm core diameter. The rod is pumped with a 793 nm laser diode and produces the highest peak power at 1 kHz repetition rate with 6.5 ns pulse duration and more than 7 W average output power. This result exemplifies the potential of this fiber design to scale pulse peak powers and pulse energies to the megawatt and multi-millijoule range in the 2 μm wavelength regime.

Q-switched thulium-doped photonic crystal fiber laser

We report a Q-switched thulium doped polarizing photonic crystal fiber producing 435 μJ, 49 ns pulses at 10 kHz. The 8.9 kW peak power is the highest of any nanosecond Tm:fiber oscillator published to date.

Comparison of higher-order mode suppression and Q-switched laser performance in thulium-doped large mode area and photonic crystal fibers

We report the influence of higher order modes (HOMs) in large mode fibers operation in Q-switched oscillator configurations at ~2 μm wavelength. S(2) measurements confirm guiding of LP(11) and LP(02) fiber modes in a large mode area (LMA) step-index fiber, whereas a prototype photonic crystal fiber (PCF) provides nearly single-mode performance with a small portion of light in the LP(11) mode. The difference in HOM content leads to a significant difference in Q-switched oscillator performance. In the step-index fiber, the percentage of cladding light increases by 20% to >40% with increasing pulse energy to ~250 µJ. We accredit this degradation to saturation of the gain in the fundamental mode leading to more light generated in the HOMs, which is eventually converted into cladding light. No such degradation is seen in PCF laser system for >400 µJ energies.

CW-lasing and amplification in Tm 3+ -doped photonic crystal fiber rod

We report lasing and amplification in a rod type thulium-doped photonic crystal fiber with 80 μm core diameter. The rod is pumped with a 793 nm laser diode and produces more than 20 W output power at a beam quality M(2)<1.3. The laser/amplifier has a slope efficiency of 27.8%/20.1% relative to absorbed pump power with a lasing threshold at 28.6 W. The output wavelength in the lasing configuration can be tuned over 180 nm from 1810-1990 nm.

Integrated Tm:fiber MOPA with polarized output and narrow linewidth with 100 W average power

We report on a Tm:fiber master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) system producing 109 W CW output power, with >15 dB polarization extinction ratio, sub-nm spectral linewidth, and M2 <1.25. The system consists of polarization maintaining (PM) fiber and PM-fiber components including tapered fiber bundle pump combiners, a single-mode to large mode area mode field adapter, and a fiber-coupled isolator. The laser components ultimately determine the system architecture and the limits of laser performance, particularly considering the immature and rapidly developing state of fiber components in the 2 μm wavelength regime.

Spectral narrowing and stabilization of thulium fiber lasers using guided-mode resonance filters

We used guided-mode resonance filters (GMRFs), fabricated using thin-film deposition and chemical etching, as intracavity feedback elements to stabilize and narrow the output spectrum in thulium-doped fiber oscillators operating in the 2 μm wavelength regime, producing linewidths of <700 pm up to 10 W power levels. A Tm fiber-based amplified spontaneous emission source was used to characterize the reflective properties of the GMRFs. Linewidths of 500 pm and a 7.3 dB reduction in transmission were measured on resonances.