Active Optical Fibers and Components for Fiber Lasers Emitting in the 2-μm Spectral Range.

Laser sources emitting in the infrared range at around 2 µm are attracting great interest for a variety of applications like processing of transparent thermoplastic polymers in industry as well as plenty of applications in medicine, spectroscopy, gas sensing, nonlinear frequency conversion to the mid-infrared, to mention a few. Of late, fiber lasers compared to other kinds of lasers benefit from their all-fiber design, leading to a compact, robust, and well thermally manageable device. Particularly, thulium- and holmium-doped fiber lasers are the first choice in fiber lasers emitting light around 2 µm.

Single-frequency fiber laser based on a fiber ring resonator filter tunable in a broad range from 1023 nm to 1107 nm.

We present a broadly tunable single-frequency ytterbium-doped fiber laser. Its broadband tunability is made possible by low resonator losses. The wavelength is determined by a grating filter, while the single-frequency regime is achieved by filtering the longitudinal modes in a fiber ring resonance filter.

High-power fiber laser with a polarizing diffraction grating milled on the facet of an optical fiber.

We milled a sub-wavelength diffraction grating on the facet of a large mode area fiber. The diffraction grating had different reflectivities for TE and TM polarized light. It was tested in a thulium-doped fiber laser where it functioned as a low reflectivity output mirror integrated with an intracavity polarizer.

Enhanced pump absorption efficiency in coiled and twisted double-clad thulium-doped fibers.

Results of the first experimental demonstration of the recently proposed technique for improvement of the pump absorption in double-clad fibers by their simultaneous coiling and twisting are reported. The peak absorption (14 dB) of 3-m long hexagonal thulium-doped fiber was increased by 8 dB by its simultaneous coiling and twisting. Explanation of the effect is given by numerical modelling of the pump absorption in hexagonal and panda-type double-clad fibers.

Mode-field adapter for tapered-fiber-bundle signal and pump combiners.

We report on a novel mode-field adapter that is proposed to be incorporated inside tapered fused-fiber-bundle pump and signal combiners for high-power double-clad fiber lasers. Such an adapter allows optimization of signal-mode-field matching on the input and output fibers. Correspondingly, losses of the combiner signal branch are significantly reduced.

Wideband thulium-holmium-doped fiber source with combined forward and backward amplified spontaneous emission at 1600-2300 nm spectral band.

We have experimentally demonstrated two extremely wideband amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) sources. High bandwidth is achieved by combining the backward and forward ASEs generated in thulium-holmium-doped fiber using appropriate wideband couplers. The ASE source optimized for flat spectral power density covers a spectral range from 1527 to 2171 nm at a -10  dB level.