Svetlana S. Aleshkina

Management of the high-order mode content in large (40 μm) core photonic bandgap Bragg fiber laser

Very large-mode-area Yb(3+)-doped single-mode photonic bandgap (PBG) Bragg fiber oscillators are considered. The transverse hole-burning effect is numerically modeled, which helps properly design the PBG cladding and the Yb(3+)-doped region for the high-order mode content to be carefully controlled. A ratio of the Yb(3+)-doped region diameter to the overall core diameter of 40% allows for single-mode emission, even for small spool diameters of 15 cm. Such a fiber was manufactured and subsequently used as the core element of a cw oscillator. Very good beam quality parameter M(2)=1.12 and slope efficiency of 80% were measured. Insensitivity to bending, exemplified by the absence of temporal drift of the beam, was demonstrated for curvature diameter as small as 15 cm.

Very-large-mode-area photonic bandgap Bragg fiber polarizing in a wide spectral range

A design of a polarizing all-glass Bragg fiber with a microstructure core has been proposed for the first time. This design provides suppression of high-order modes and of one of the polarization states of the fundamental mode. The polarizing fiber was fabricated by a new, simple method based on a combination of the modified chemical vapor deposition (MCVD) process and the rod-in-tube technique. The mode field area has been found to be about 870 μm² near λ=1064 nm. The polarization extinction ratio better than 13 dB has been observed over a 33% wavelength range (from 1 to 1.4 μm) after propagation in a 1.7 m fiber piece bent to a radius of 70 cm.

Large-mode-area highly Yb-doped photodarkening-free Al 2 O 3 -P 2 O 5 -SiO 2 -Based fiber

Large-mode area (LMA) Yb-doped fibers are routinely used in high-power CW and pulsed fiber lasers and amplifiers. Solubility of Yb³⁺ ions in pure silica glass is rather small; therefore co-doping with Al<inf>2</inf>O<inf>3</inf> is required to suppress clustering. Single-mode operation in LMA fibers (core diameter ∼ 20 µm) is possible, when the refractive index difference between the core and the cladding (Δn) is about 0.002 or less. Both Al<inf>2</inf>O<inf>3</inf> and Yb<inf>2</inf>O<inf>3</inf> have a relatively high molar refractivity (∼0.0025/mol.% and 0.001/wt.%, respectively), and therefore only a small Al<inf>2</inf>O<inf>3</inf> concentration can be incorporated into a highly Yb-doped LMA fiber. Clustering of Yb³⁺ ions results in photodarkening (PD) - degradation of the laser properties with time due to a grey loss increase. Utilization of the phosphorosilicate glass matrix allows one to suppress PD almost completely (the grey loss due to PD is 10–100 times smaller in comparison with that in the aluminosilicate fiber) [1], but a typical Δn in such fibers is about 0.005–0.015.

MW peak power diffraction limited monolithic Yb-doped tapered fiber amplifier

Chirped pulse monolithic fiber amplifier based on a newly developed tapered polarization maintaining Yb-doped fiber has been developed and optimized. A novel amplification regime in a relatively long (220 cm) tapered fiber of improved design, which has been theoretically predicted, allowed us to achieve an ultimate high peak power. In this regime, the signal propagates most of the fiber without amplification and growths very rapidly only in the last 80 cm of the tapered fiber, which has a mode field area of approximately 1000 μm2 near the output. We have demonstrated amplification of 20 ps chirped pulses centered at 1056-nm with spectral width of 20 nm to 0.7 MW peak power directly from the tapered fiber amplifier. The pulses had a diffraction limited quality (M2 ~ 1.124) and could be compressed down to 350 fs with 50% efficiency. In addition, amplification of narrow-band 9 ps pulses centered at 1064 nm to a peak power of 1.8 MW directly from the tapered fiber amplifier was demonstrated.

Low-loss hybrid fiber with zero dispersion wavelength shifted to 1 µm.

We proposed and investigated a novel type of all-glass hybrid fiber where light is confined in the low-index core due to both total internal reflection and coherent Fresnel reflection (a photonic bandgap mechanism). The hybrid mode has an anomalous dispersion of 13 ps/(nm km) at 1064 nm and low loss (~6 dB/km), and it can be easily excited by splicing with a single-mode step-index fiber. The compression of positively chirped 8 ps pulses down to 330 fs was demonstrated with the fabricated hybrid fiber.

Monolithic high peak-power coherent Doppler lidar system

In this work we present a monolithic lidar system, based on a newly-developed double-clad large mode area (LMA) polarization-maintaining Er-doped fiber and specially designed LMA passive components. Optimization of the fiber designs resulted in as high as 100 W of SBS limited peak power. The amplifier and its passive components (circulator and collimator) were integrated in an existing lidar system. The enhanced lidar system provides three times increase of scanning range compared to one based on standard telecom-grade amplifiers.

Monolithic sub-MW peak power tapered ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier

ABSTRACT In this study, we present a novel monolithic ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier with more than 0.5 MW peak power output power. The amplifier is based on a 2.1 m long tapered fiber with core/cladding diameters changing from 10/80 µm (at the signal input end) to 50/430 µm (signal output, pump input). The fiber has all-glass polarization-maintaining design, that make possible utilization of conventional FC adapter and standard angle polishing to 7° for thick end. Pump absorption was measured to be 8 dB at 915 nm for the whole fiber length. Despite a very large mode area (~30 µm) the tapered fiber demonstrates low bend sensitivity (it is possible to coil tapered fiber with 9 cm radius) and a diffraction limited beam quality. In the amplifier the pump power was coupled through the thick end by means of collimating and focusing lenses. Dichroic mirror employed to separate output signal and counter-propagating pump power. We obtained 3.5 W of average output power for a 5 mW seed signal (coupled by usual fusion splicing through a thin end) corresponding to a 28 dB gain. The amplified pulses have duration of about 5 ps and energy of about 3.3 µJ that corresponding to over 0.5 MW peak power. The spectral width was 28 nm operating with center wavelength of 1057 nm.To the best of our knowledge it is the highest peak power obtained directly from the all-fiber amplifier.. Keywords: Yb-doped tapered fiber, all-fiber megawatt system, low bend sensitive tapered fiber, ultrashort pulses amplification 1. INTRODUCTION The very rapid power scaling of both pulsed and cw Yb-doped fiber lasers dictates stringent requirements on the utilized fibers, mainly in terms of nonlinear effects threshold. Conventional single-mode Yb-doped fibers exhibit a relatively low threshold for nonlinear effects since the light is confined in a small core (6-10 µm in diameter) and propagates along long distances (above 10 m in some cases). The increasing of nonlinearity threshold is the urgent problem in the case of pulsed fiber systems, which have been demonstrated to reach power levels of several hundreds of kW and even approach MW power level. The most simple and obvious way to solve this problem is the enlargement of core diameter resulting in the enlarged mode filed diameter of the fundamental mode. In the same time, this approach has so me drawbacks: the fiber becomes a multimode, leading to degradation of output beam quality, and extremely bend-sensitive, resulting in requirement to keep the fiber straight, i.e. the system becomes cumbersome. The main goal of this work was to develop a novel approach based on utilizing of so-called tapered fibers that allows one to obtain large mode field areas and maintain an acceptable bend-loss sensitivity at the same time. The fiber parameters optimization and its using in the final amplification stage of picosecond chirped-pulse amplification system have been demonstrated. The obtained output peak power was record for all-fiber amplifying systems and approached by power level of microstructured fibers based systems.

Narrow-linewidth mode-lock figure-eight nanosecond pulse fiber laser

A new figure-eight mode-lock laser design based on a passive nonlinear loop mirror with a small modulation depth has been proposed. Self-started narrow-linewidth nanosecond-pulse lasers are realized: one is based on polarization-insensitive components (with a polarization controller) and the other is an environmentally stable adjustment-free laser based on polarization-maintaining components. In both cases, the lasers generate rectangular-shaped pulses. The duration of the pulses can be continuously adjusted from sub-nanosecond to more than tens of nanoseconds by simply changing the pump power.

Quasi-single-mode hybrid fibre with anomalous dispersion in the 1 μm range

We have proposed and demonstrated an approach for ensuring quasi-single-mode operation of a cylindrically symmetric hybrid fibre having anomalous dispersion at wavelengths around 1 μm. Basic to this approach are distinctions between spatial fibre mode distributions and the use of a high-loss ring layer in the region of a minimum in the electric field of the operating hybrid mode.

5.5 W monolitic single-mode fiber laser and amplifier operating near 976 nm

An all-glass Yb-doped single-mode fiber laser and amplifier with output power of more than 5 W near 977 nm have been realized. Both laser and amplifier were based on a specially developed photodarking-free Yb-doped fibers with increased core-to-clad diameter ratio (up to 0.31).