1 mJ nanosecond all-fiber thulium-doped fiber laser at 2.05 μm

Opt Express. 2015 Jul 13;23(14):18098-105. doi: 10.1364/OE.23.018098.

Abstract

A high energy all-fiber format nanosecond thulium-doped fiber laser at 2050 nm with a master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) configuration is presented in this paper. The seed oscillator is a linearly polarized gain-switched fiber laser pumped by a 1550 nm fiber laser. The output pulse of the seed has a polarization extinction ratio (PER) better than 16 dB with a maximal output power of 470 mW. After two-stage double- cladding fiber amplifiers, the average power at 40 kHz was boosted up to 40.5 W. The output pulse has a maximum pulse energy of 1 mJ with a pulse width of 100 ns, which corresponds to a peak power of 10 kW. To the best of our knowledge, it is the highest single pulse energy ever reported for a nanosecond thulium-doped all-fiber MOPA system at 2050 nm.