Coherent combination of two Tm-doped fiber amplifiers

Ultrafast Tm-doped fiber laser system delivering 1.65-mJ, sub-100-fs pulses at a 100-kHz repetition rate

High-energy, ultrafast, short-wavelength infrared laser sources with high average power are important tools for industrial and scientific applications. Through the coherent combination of four ultrafast thulium-doped rod-type fiber amplifiers, we demonstrate a Tm-doped chirped pulse amplification system with a compressed pulse energy of 1.65 mJ and 167 W of average output power at a repetition rate of 101 kHz. The system delivers 85 fs pulses with a peak power of 15 GW. Additionally, the system presents a high long- and short-term stability. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest average output power short wavelength IR, mJ-class source to date. This result shows the potential of coherent beam combining techniques in the short wavelength infrared spectral region for the power scalability of these systems.

Millijoule 265 fs Tm:YAP regenerative amplifier for driving ultrabroad band collinear mid-infrared optical parametric amplifiers

Generation of 265-fs millijoule pulses at 1940 nm from a solid-state regenerative amplifier has been demonstrated. The amplification chain consists of a thulium-doped fluoride (Tm:ZBLAN) fiber oscillator, a two stage Tm:ZBLAN fiber preamplifier, and a regenerative amplifier with a thermoelectrically cooled thulium-doped yttrium aluminium perovskite crystal. The newly developed light source is used for pumping an ultra broadband mid-infrared optical parametric amplifier based on a gallium selenide crystal. The 2.5-4 µm range of a multioctave supercontinuum, generated in a polarization-maintaining ZBALN fiber, is used as the MIR seed. The amplified signal in combination with the corresponding idler pulses spread from 2.5 to 10 µm in a collinear geometry.

Thulium-doped fiber chirped-pulse amplification system with 2 GW of peak power

Thulium-doped fibers with ultra large mode-field areas offer new opportunities for the power scaling of mid-IR ultrashort-pulse laser sources. Here, we present a laser system delivering a pulse-peak power of 2 GW and a nearly transform-limited pulse duration of 200 fs in combination with 28.7 W of average power. This performance level has been achieved by optimizing the pulse shape, reducing the overlap with atmospheric absorption lines, and incorporating a climate chamber to reduce the humidity of the atmospheric environment.

High-power linearly-polarized picosecond thulium-doped all-fiber master-oscillator power-amplifier

We demonstrated a linearly-polarized picosecond thulium-doped all-fiber-integrated master-oscillator power-amplifier system, which yielded 240 W of average output power at 127 MHz repetition rate. The seed source is a passively mode-locked polarization-maintaining thulium-doped all-fiber oscillator with a nearly transform-limited pulse duration of 10 ps. In combination with a pre-chirp fiber having a positive group velocity dispersion and a three stage polarization-maintaining thulium-doped all-fiber amplifier, output pulse energies up to 1.89 µJ with 42 kW pulse peak power are obtained without the need of complex free-space stretcher or compressor setups. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest average output power ever reported for a picosecond all-fiber-integrated laser at 2 µm wavelength region.

Mode instability thresholds for Tm-doped fiber amplifiers pumped at 790 nm

We use a detailed numerical model of stimulated thermal Rayleigh scattering to compute mode instability thresholds in Tm(3+)-doped fiber amplifiers. The fiber amplifies 2040 nm light using a 790 nm pump. The cross-relaxation process is strong, permitting power efficiencies of 60%. The predicted instability thresholds are compared with those in similar Yb(3+)-doped fiber amplifiers with 976 nm pump and 1060 nm signal, and are found to be higher, even though the heat load is much higher in Tm-doped amplifiers. The higher threshold in the Tm-doped fiber is attributed to its longer signal wavelength, and to stronger gain saturation, due in part to cross-relaxation heating.

Self-compression in a solid fiber to 24 MW peak power with few-cycle pulses at 2 μm wavelength

We report on the experimental realization of a compact, fiber-based, ultrashort-pulse laser system in the 2 μm wavelength region delivering 24 fs pulse duration with 24 MW pulse peak power and 24.6 W average power. This performance level has been enabled by the favorable quadratic wavelength-dependence of the self-focusing limit, which has been experimentally verified to be at approximately 24 MW for circular polarization in a solid-core fused-silica fiber operated at a wavelength around 2 μm. The anomalous dispersion in this wavelength region allows for a simultaneous nonlinear spectral broadening and temporal pulse compression. This makes an additional compression stage redundant and facilitates a very simple and power-scalable approach. Simulations that include both the nonlinear pulse evolution and the transverse optical Kerr effect support the experimental results.