Ytterbium-doped high power fiber lasers with fused fiber bundle combiner

Jihuang Zhang; Chuan Huang; Chao Yang; Yuhua Li; Wei Chen; Peixiang Lu

doi:10.1117/12.823358

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18 February 2009 Ytterbium-doped high power fiber lasers with fused fiber bundle combiner

Jihuang Zhang, Chuan Huang, Chao Yang, Yuhua Li, Wei Chen, Peixiang Lu

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Proceedings Volume 7276, Photonics and Optoelectronics Meetings (POEM) 2008: Laser Technology and Applications; 72760U (2009) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.823358
Event: Photonics and Optoelectronics Meetings, 2008, Wuhan, China

Abstract

Ytterbium (Yb³⁺)-doped high power fiber lasers are attractive because of high efficiency, high power and good beam quality, which have many potential applications in telecommunication, machining and national defense. Most of the high power Yb³⁺-doped double-clad (DC) fiber lasers use end pump technology, which is the conventional method to couple pump lights into the inner cladding. However, this pump method is limited by the single laser diode's power and brightness. While multimode fused fiber bundle combiner could combine multiplex individual laser diodes and it is convenient for fabrication compared with side pumped technology. We reported a ytterbium-doped double-clad fiber laser, one-end pumped by six 915 nm laser diodes combined by a multimode fused fiber bundle combiner. The combiner fused splicing six fiber pigtails from diodes exhibited low-loss and high efficiency handling of 91%. We demonstrated that the fiber laser generates up to 20.5 W of continuous-wave (CW) output power at 1106 nm with a 22m long D-shape inner cladding ytterbium-doped fiber. The slope efficiency was about 75% and the quantum efficiency was up to 91%. We also demonstrated a high power fiber laser at 300W level pumped by a single 976nm laser diode, and the slope efficiency was nearly 80%.

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Jihuang Zhang, Chuan Huang, Chao Yang, Yuhua Li, Wei Chen, and Peixiang Lu "Ytterbium-doped high power fiber lasers with fused fiber bundle combiner", Proc. SPIE 7276, Photonics and Optoelectronics Meetings (POEM) 2008: Laser Technology and Applications, 72760U (18 February 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.823358

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