Neodymium-Doped Cladding-Pumped Aluminosilicate Fiber Laser Tunable in the 0 . 9-m Wavelength Range

A tunable high-power cladding-pumped neodymiumdoped aluminosilicate fiber laser is demonstrated. The maximum power reached was 2.4 W with a slope efficiency of 41% and a threshold pump power of 1.68 W, both with respect to launched pump power, when cladding pumped by two 808-nm diode pump sources at both fiber ends. The dependence of the tuning range on the fiber length is investigated. The tuning range changed from 922 to 942 nm for a 25-m-long fiber to 908–938 nm with a 14-m-long fiber, because of reabsorption effects. The output linewidth was 0.26 nm in a diffraction-limited beam. Operation on the challenging 0.9m three-level transition in neodymium-doped double-clad fiber laser was facilitated by a W-type core refractive index profile. This filtered out the unwanted and competing strong transition at 1.06 m while guidance of 0.9 m remained intact.

[1]  Katsumi Morishita,et al.  Numerical Analysis of Pulse Broadening in Graded Index Optical Fibers , 1981 .

[2]  M.J. Soderlund,et al.  A depressed-index cladding filter for suppressing 1.06 /spl mu/m emission in a Nd-doped silica fiber amplifier , 2004, Optical Fiber Communication Conference, 2004. OFC 2004.

[3]  Shaif-ul Alam,et al.  High-power wavelength-tunable cladding-pumped rare-earth-doped silica fiber lasers , 2004 .

[4]  Norman P. Barnes,et al.  Development of Nd-doped solid-state laser materials for 944 nm operation , 2001 .

[5]  M. Monerie,et al.  Propagation in Doubly Clad Single-Mode Fibers , 1982 .

[6]  S. Kawakami,et al.  Characteristics of a doubly clad optical fiber with a low-index inner cladding , 1974 .

[7]  G. Papen,et al.  Efficient amplification using the /sup 4/F/sub 3/2//spl rarr//sup 4/I/sub 9/2/ transition in Nd-doped silica fiber , 1999, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[8]  E. Wassermann,et al.  Fabrication of large scale periodic magnetic nanostructures , 1998 .

[9]  Raymond J. Beach,et al.  938 nm Nd-Doped High Power Cladding Pumped Fiber Amplifier , 2002 .

[10]  D. Richardson,et al.  Three-level fiber DFB laser at 980 nm , 2004, Optical Fiber Communication Conference, 2004. OFC 2004.

[11]  Manuel J. Leonardo,et al.  3-Watt blue source based on 914-nm Nd:YVO4 passively-Q-switched laser amplified in cladding-pumped Nd:fiber , 2004 .

[12]  David N. Payne,et al.  Neodymium-doped silica single-mode fibre lasers , 1985 .

[13]  Farhad Hakimi,et al.  DOUBLE CLAD, OFFSET CORE Nd FIBER LASER , 1988 .

[14]  H. D. Hendricks,et al.  Diode-laser-pumped tunable 896-939.5-nm neodymium-doped fiber laser with 43-mW output power. , 1998, Applied optics.