High-power rod-type photonic crystal fiber laser

Opt Express. 2005 Feb 21;13(4):1055-8. doi: 10.1364/opex.13.001055.

Abstract

We report on a novel ytterbium-doped fiber design that combines the advantages of rod and fiber gain media. The fiber design has outer dimensions of a rod laser, meaning a diameter in the range of a few millimeters and a length of just a few tens of centimeters, and includes two important waveguide structures, one for pump radiation and one for laser radiation. We obtained 120-W output power in single-mode beam quality from a 48-cm-long fiber cane that corresponds to an extracted power of 250 W/m. The fiber has significantly reduced nonlinearity, which therefore allows for scalability in the performance of a high-peak-power fiber laser and amplifier system.