Spectral broadening in high-power Yb-doped fiber lasers employing narrow-linewidth multilongitudinal-mode oscillators.

High-power continuous wave fiber lasers with narrow linewidths are required for spectral beam combining systems. A 2.9 kW Yb-doped fiber laser with an output linewidth as narrow as 0.31 nm employing a narrow-linewidth multilongitudinal-mode oscillator is experimentally demonstrated. The numerical simulations reveal that the spectral broadening of the bandwidth grows almost linearly with injected mode number, which provides a potential way to further suppress the nonlinear spectral broadening in high-power fiber lasers.

[1]  V. Supradeepa.  Stimulated Brillouin scattering thresholds in optical fibers for lasers linewidth broadened with noise. , 2012, Optics express.

[2]  Jeffrey P. Koplow,et al.  Analysis of spectral broadening of incoherent light in optical fibers with nonzero dispersion , 2011 .

[3]  Tso Yee Fan,et al.  Beam combining of ytterbium fiber amplifiers (Invited) , 2007 .

[4]  David J. Richardson,et al.  High power fiber lasers: current status and future perspectives [Invited] , 2010 .

[5]  Jens Limpert,et al.  High average power spectral beam combining of four fiber amplifiers to 8.2 kW. , 2011, Optics letters.

[6]  S. Babin,et al.  Output spectrum of Yb-doped fiber lasers. , 2012, Optics letters.

[7]  Joshua E. Rothenberg,et al.  Active phase and polarization locking of a 1.4 kW fiber amplifier. , 2010, Optics letters.

[8]  Eric Honea,et al.  Spectrally beam combined fiber lasers for high power, efficiency, and brightness , 2013, Photonics West - Lasers and Applications in Science and Engineering.

[9]  I. Kelson,et al.  Strongly pumped fiber lasers , 1998 .

[10]  B. Ward,et al.  Modeling of transient modal instability in fiber amplifiers. , 2013, Optics express.

[11]  Pu Zhou,et al.  Coherent beam combining of high power fiber lasers: Progress and prospect , 2013, Science China Technological Sciences.

[12]  R. Stolen,et al.  Stimulated Brillouin scattering in optical fibers , 1972 .

[14]  Cesar Jauregui,et al.  Physical origin of mode instabilities in high-power fiber laser systems. , 2012, Optics express.

[15]  Kevin L. Schroder,et al.  The effect of dispersion on spectral broadening of incoherent continuous-wave light in optical fibers. , 2010, Optics express.

[16]  Valentin Gapontsev,et al.  Industrial grade 100 kW power CW fiber laser , 2013 .

[17]  R. Beach,et al.  Analysis of the scalability of diffraction-limited fiber lasers and amplifiers to high average power. , 2008, Optics express.

[18]  T. Schreiber,et al.  Fabrication and evaluation of a 500 W cladding-light stripper , 2013, Photonics West - Micro and Nano Fabricated Electromechanical and Optical Components.