Theoretical and experimental research on the effect of initial chirp on near-infrared supercontinuum generation by a nanosecond pulse in a nonlinear fiber amplifier is carried out. The complex Ginzburg-Landau equation is used to simulate the propagation of the pulse in the fiber amplifier and the results show that pulses with negative initial chirp produce the widest supercontinuum and pulses with positive initial chirp produce the narrowest supercontinuum when the central wavelength of the pump lies in the normal dispersion region of the gain fiber. A self-made line width narrowing system is utilized to control the initial chirp of the nanosecond pump pulse and a four-stage master oscillator power amplifier configuration is adopted to produce a high power near-infrared suppercontinuum. The experimental results are in good agreement with simulations which can provide some guidance on further optimization of the system in future work.
The average power of fiber lasers has been scaled deeply into the kW regime in the past years. However, stimulated Raman scattering(SRS) is still a major factor limiting further power scaling. Here, we have demonstrated for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, the suppression of SRS in a half 10 kW tandem pumping fiber amplifier using chirped and tilted fiber Bragg gratings(CTFBGs). With specially self-designed and manufactured CTFBGs inserted between the seed laser and the amplifier stage, a maximum SRS suppression ratio of >15 dB in spectrum is observed with no reduction in laser efficiency. With one CTFBG, the effective output power is improved to3.9 kW with a beam quality M2 factor of ～1.7 from <3.5 k W with an M2 factor of >2; with two CTFBGs, the effective laser power reaches 4.2 kW with an increasing ratio of 20% and an M2 factor of ～1.8, and further power improvement is limited by the power and performance of the 1018 nm pump sources. This work provides an effective SRS suppression method for high-power all-fiber lasers, which is useful for further power scaling of these systems.
We report here a high-power, wavelength tunable and narrow linewidth 1.5 μm all-fiber laser amplifier based on a tunable diode laser and Er-Yb co-doped fibers. The laser wavelength can be precisely tuned from 1535 nm to 1580 nm, which covers many absorption lines of mid-infrared laser gases, such as C2 H2, HCN, CO, and HI. The maximum laser power is >11 W, and the linewidth is about 200–300 MHz, which is close to the absorption linewidth of the above-mentioned gases. This work provides a suitable pump source for high-power wavelength tunable mid-infrared fiber gas lasers based on low-loss hollow-core fibers.
