Jacketed air-clad cladding pumped ytterbium-doped fibre laser with wide tuning range

A tunable cladding-pumped ytterbium-doped fibre laser is presented. An air-clad inner cladding supported by a micro-structured silica mesh inside a silica jacket is used. A measured inner-cladding NA of 0.4 to 0.5 enables efficient pump launch into a 36 /spl mu/m-diameter inner cladding. The small inner cladding area enables tuning from 1010 to 1120 nm.