Highly efficient 90μm core rod fiber amplifier delivering >300W without beam instabilities

Marko Laurila, Mette M. Jorgensen, Jesper Lagsgaard, Thomas Tanggaard Alkeskjold

Research output: Contribution to conferenceConference abstract for conferenceResearchpeer-review

Abstract

Summary form only given. Ultrafast ps and fs laser systems using ROD fiber amplifiers delivering megawatts of peak power and several hundreds of watts in average power have attracted significant academic and industrial interest in recent years. However, the power scaling has reached a temporary limit caused by thermal effects, which has set a limit of average power scaling of these amplifiers due to so called modal instabilities (MIs) [1]. New types of fiber designs with very large cores have been suggested to increase the average power limit [2, 3]. One way of achieving this, is using resonant structures [3], however it is often speculated that these structures are sensitive to temperature causing unstable beam quality under high thermal load (high power extraction pr unit length).A 25-ps mode-locked linearly polarized seed source at 1032 nm (40MHz rep rate, 16 W average power) is used to seed a distributed mode filtering ROD fiber with 90μm core diameter. The ROD fiber shows excellent power conversion efficiency as shown in Fig. 1 with almost linear slope and the MI threshold level is observed at 314 W of average output power corresponding to ~320kW of peak power. Optical to optical conversion efficiency is 69% and the mode quality is stable below the MI threshold. No non-linear effects are observed and the ASE is suppressed by ~35dB, shown in Fig.1. The experiments are modeled using a semi-analytical approach [4, 5], where a nonlinear coupling constant that depends on the thermo-optical effect is determined. χ is combined with FEM-calculated mode distributions to predict the onset of modal instabilities for this particular fiber design.We demonstrate that a ROD fiber design having a resonant structure can deliver efficient and linear amplification to high average output power without suffering from thermal load induced beam quality degradation. In addition, we evaluate the influence of the noise of the seed source on the MI threshold level. We model the MI threshold for this fiber and show good agreement between measurements and simulations, when the MIs are seeded by system dependent noise.
Original languageEnglish
Publication date2013
Number of pages1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2013
Externally publishedYes
Event2013 Conference on Lasers & Electro-Optics Europe & the International Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-IQEC) - Munich, Germany
Duration: 12 May 201316 May 2013
http://www.cleoeurope.org/

Conference

Conference2013 Conference on Lasers & Electro-Optics Europe & the International Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-IQEC)
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityMunich
Period12/05/201316/05/2013
Internet address

Keywords

  • finite element analysis
  • laser beams
  • laser mode locking
  • laser noise
  • nonlinear optics
  • optical fibre amplifiers
  • thermo-optical effects
  • Aerospace
  • Bioengineering
  • Communication, Networking and Broadcast Technologies
  • Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
  • Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
  • Engineering Profession
  • Fields, Waves and Electromagnetics
  • General Topics for Engineers
  • Nuclear Engineering
  • Photonics and Electrooptics
  • Power, Energy and Industry Applications
  • power 1.6E+01 W
  • power 3.14E+02 W
  • size 9.0E-05 m
  • time 2.5E-11 s
  • wavelength 1.032E-06 m
  • average output
  • average power limit
  • average power scaling
  • distributed mode filtering ROD fiber
  • FEM-calculated mode distributions
  • Fiber nonlinear optics
  • highly efficient core rod fiber amplifier
  • linear amplification
  • linear slope
  • MI threshold level
  • modal instabilities
  • mode quality
  • mode-locked linearly polarized seed source
  • nonlinear coupling constant
  • Optical fiber amplifiers
  • Optical fiber polarization
  • optical to optical conversion efficiency
  • Optimized production technology
  • peak power
  • power 16 W
  • power 314 W
  • Power amplifiers
  • power conversion efficiency
  • Power generation
  • resonant structures
  • ROD fiber amplifiers
  • ROD fiber design
  • seed source noise
  • semi-analytical approach
  • size 90 mum
  • system dependent noise
  • thermal load induced beam quality degradation
  • thermo-optical effect
  • time 25 ps
  • ultrafast fs laser systems
  • ultrafast ps laser systems
  • unstable beam quality
  • wavelength 1032 nm

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