Xu Dangpeng

Weak etalon effect in wave plates can introduce significant FM-to-AM modulations in complex laser systems.

The conversion of frequency modulation to amplitude modulation (FM-to-AM) effect is harmful to the high power laser facility based on the phase modulation technique. The FM-to-AM effect of phase modulation pulse induced by the weak etalon effect in wave plates was investigated theoretically and experimentally. A bulk phase modulator with a modulation frequency of 9.2GHz was employed. The numerical simulation results show that the FM-to-AM effect with a temporal modulation depth of 2.5% and 29.7% on the top of the pulse shape was induced by the weak etalon effect in half-wave plate with thickness of 1mm and residual reflectance ratio of 0.5% for 1 pass and 12 passes respectively. On the same condition, the temporal modulation depth is 3.0% and 23.4% respectively in the experiment. The results are in good agreement with numerical simulation results. To our knowledge, it is the first time to introduce the weak etalon effect in wave plates for a complex phase modulation laser system.

Impact of Spectral Filter on Phase Modulation Pulse in Fiber Front End System

The transmission characteristics of phase modulation pulse transmitted through the filter in the power amplifier are investigated theoretically and experimentally. The narrow bandpass filter can induce large temporal modulation depth for the phase modulation pulse and induce double amplitude modulation (AM) if the frequency shift is lower than half bandwidth of the signal spectrum. We should choose a wider bandwidth filter to minimize the impact of the filter on the output pulse and suppress the amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) for the power fiber amplifier. These results are of benefit to the design of the fiber front end system.

Suppression Impact of Group-Velocity Dispersion on the Cell of Pulse Cleaning

In order to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of an all-fiber front-end system for high-energy pete-watt (PW) laser devices, we propose a method to restrain the noise by optical Kerr effect. In terms of analytical calculation, it is found that the signal-to-noise ratio can be increased by three orders of magnitude with the cell of pulse cleaning for the pulses, with the full width at half maximum TFWHM larger than 100ps. However, numerical calculation indicates that the group-velocity dispersion (GVD) may have a marked effect on the pulses with TFWHM smaller than 100 ps but larger than 5ps, with the help of self-phase modulation (SPM). This would debase the performance of the cell of pulse cleaning. Meanwhile, we study the methods of restraining the distortion for the pulses with different peak powers to improve the performance of an all-fiber front-end system for high-energy PW laser devices, These results are of benefit to the experiments and the improvement of signal-to-noise ratio for high-energy PW laser devices.

FM-AM Conversion Induced by Polarization Mode Dispersion in Fiber Systems

The conversion of the frequency modulated pulse induced from frequency modulation (FM) to amplitude modulation (AM) by the polarization mode dispersion (PMD) is theoretically and experimentally investigated. When there is no polarizer at the output end of a fiber system, the amplitude modulation depth is stable by 8%. Random amplitude modulation is observed when a polarizer is placed at the output end of the fiber system. The observed minimum and maximum modulation depths in our experiment are 5% and 80%, respectively. Simulation results show that the amplitude modulation is stable by 4% induced mainly by group velocity dispersion (GVD) when there is no polarizer, and the amplitude modulation depth displays the random variation character induced by the GVD and PMD. Lastly, a new fiber system scheme is proposed and little amplitude modulation is observed at the top of the output pulse.

High power, strictly single transverse mode ytterbium-doped large mode area fiber amplifier

The paper reports a high power, strictly single transverse mode ytterbium-doped large mode area fiber amplifier with backward pump scheme that produces near diffraction-limited, 2-ns shaped pulses with energies of 38µJ and peak powers in excess of 39kW at a repetition rate of 1Hz.