X. J. Xu

High power 1018 nm ytterbium doped fiber laser with an output power of 309 W

In this letter, we report on a high power 1018 nm ytterbium doped fiber laser. The unwanted gain near 1030 nm is suppressed by appropriately selecting the specifications of YDF. A record output power of 309 W is obtained, with an efficiency of 71%.

20 W all fiber supercontinuum generation from picosecond MOPA pumped photonic crystal fiber

An all fiber high power supercontinuum (SC) source is demonstrated by pumping a section of photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with a picosecond MOPA laser. The core of the PCF is enlarged at the input end through a serious of PCF post processing method to match the output fiber of the picosecond laser, to ensure low loss splicing, hence high power operation of the whole system. The supercontinuum output spectrum covers the wavelength range from 650 nm to beyond 1700 nm. Limited by available pump power, 20 W super-continuum output power is obtained under 29.5 W picosecond pump power, giving a high optical to optical conversion efficiency of 67.8%.

Coherent beam combining of pulsed fiber lasers with hybrid phase control

We demonstrate a scalable architecture for coherent combining of all-fiber pulsed lasers with hybrid phase control involving passive phasing and active phasing for the first time. Synchronized and passive phased pulsed laser array is built by intra-activity phase modulation. Active phase control on the passive phased pulsed laser array using stochastic parallel gradient descent algorithm provides stable in-phase coherent beam combining pattern in a turbulent atmosphere. The fringe visibility is increased from 0 two 0.43 and the power encircled in the main-lobe is 1.616 times increased when the system evolves from passive phasing to hybrid phasing. The architecture can be easily scaled up to high power by increasing power of each individual laser, number of laser elements and introduction of power amplifiers, which will lead a promising way for scaleable high power coherent beam combining of pulsed lasers.

All-fiberized master oscillator power amplifier structured narrow-linewidth nanosecond pulsed laser with 505 W average power

We report an all-fiberized narrow-linewidth nanosecond pulsed laser in the monolithic master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) configuration. The pulsed seed was obtained by modulating a continuous wave (CW) laser using an electro-optic modulator (EOM). For ?6 ns pulses with a central wavelength of ?1064?nm we obtained an average power of 505?W, corresponding to peak power of 7.9?kW. No stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) was observed when the laser operated at its maximal output power. The maximal output power is only limited by the available pump diodes. The large-mode area of the gain fiber, the short pulse width (?6?ns) and dual-single-frequency of the high-power pulses prevents the onset of SBS in the main-amplifier.

All fiber MOPA laser-pumped, continuous-wave, mid-infrared, singly-resonant optical parametric oscillator based on periodically poled MgO-Doped LiNbO3

We report a continuous-wave (CW) mid-infrared singly resonant optical parametric oscillator (SRO) based on periodically poled MgO-doped LiNbO3 (PPMgLN) pumped by a high power, single frequency fiber laser in master oscillator-power amplifier (MOPA) configuration at 1.064 μm. Using four-mirror ring OPO cavities, at the PPMgLN’s grating period of 30.5 μm and the temperature of 23°C, we achieved the maximum idler output power of 7.2 W at 3.4 μm when the pump power was 52.8 W. The total power-conversion efficiency from the pump to the idler in this experiment is about 13.6%, and corresponds to ∼44% of quantum-limited performance.

96.2 W all-fiberized nanosecond single-frequency fiber MOPA

We report experimental results on a 96.2 W all-fiberized nanosecond single-frequency masteroscillator power amplifier (MOPA) laser working at 1064 nm. An external modulation fiber laser with average power of 0.5 mW and line width of 20 kHz is used as the seed source. Amplifying the seed laser in four stages, a single-frequency laser with pulse duration of 10 ns and peak power of 816.7 W is obtained. The average output power is up to 96.2 W. Further power-scaling of this MOPA structure can be realized since our experiment is only pump-power limited.

12 W mid-infrared output, singly resonant, continuous-wave optical parametric oscillator pumped by a Yb3+-doped fiber amplifier

We report a continuous-wave singly resonant optical parametric oscillator (SRO) with more than 12 W of idler power at 3414 nm when it was operated at 30°C. The SRO was directly pumped by a single-frequency, ytterbium-doped fiber laser with 49 W linear polarization pump powers, and based on 50 mm long periodically poled MgO:LiNbO3 crystal (PPMgLN) in two-mirror linear cavity with 30.5 μm grating period. It’s pump power at threshold was 5.4 W. The slope-efficiency and quantum-limited performance reached 26 and 79.2%, respectively. The beam polarization matched the e → e + e interaction in crystal. The idler waves were temperature tuned in the range of 3654 to 3811 nm and 3248 to 3414 nm based on two 50 mm long PPMgLN with 29.5 and 30.5 μm grating period. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest continuouswave mid-IR output obtained for a fiber laser pumped optical parametric oscillator (OPO).

Coherent beam combining of fiber amplifier based on adaptive polarization and active phase control

Coherent beam combining (CBC) of a polarization-maintaining fiber amplifier and a non-polarization-maintaining fiber amplifier is presented. The experiment is based on adaptive polarization control and active phase control. The stochastic parallel gradient decent (SPGD) algorithm is used for the adaptive polarization control in the non-polarization-maintaining fiber amplifier and the active phase control is realized by single frequency dithering (SFD) algorithm. When the adaptive polarization control system and the phase control system go into closed loop, the fringe contrast of far-field intensity pattern is improved to more than 87.7%. A scalable architecture for CBC of two styles fiber amplifiers is also proposed.