This contribution presents temperature-dependent and site-selective spectroscopy measurements of Yb, Al, F co-doped silica. White light absorption and fluorescence measurements using a multimode 915 nm diode for excitation were both made over the range 77 K to 420 K. Low temperature measurements allow determination of the Stark levels. The high temperature measurements allow quantification of how the laser cross-sections vary with temperature over intervals applicable to high power laser operation. Between room temperature and 420 K, the cross-sections for some spectral regions change by more than 10%, whereas other regions are essentially unchanged over the same temperature range.
Recent years have seen silica emerge as a viable material for optical refrigeration with potential applications in directed energy, integrated photonics, and precision metrology. Proper characterization of potential composition profiles is vital for optimization. Here, static photoluminescence spectroscopy of a Yb, Al co-doped silica sample over the temperature range 80 K to 300 K reveals the emission lineshape is dependent on the excitation wavelength. The impact this has on extracted laser cooling parameters is discussed.
Record laser cooling of Yb-doped silica by 18.4 K and 6.3 K was observed in vacuum and atmospheric pressure conditions, respectively. We present a detailed investigation into the optical refrigeration of ytterbium doped silica glass for both in-air and in-vacuum conditions using various pump powers. Temperature measurements were made relative to the room temperature using thermal camera imaging and differential luminescence thermometry. Through analysis of the temporal behavior of the temperature differential at the start of the in-vacuum experiments, we find the cooling efficiency of the studied silicates to be 0.66 ± 0.07%.
We present a rod-type, Ytterbium-doped, multicore fiber with 4x4 cores. This fiber is employed in a CPA setup for coherent beam combination of femtosecond pulses. High average powers of up to 507 W after combination and compression could be achieved at 10 MHz repetition rate. A high combination efficiency of 85% could be realized together with an excellent beam quality. Additionally, up to 600 μJ pulse energy was measured in a lower repetition rate configuration.
Record laser cooling of Yb-doped silica by 18.4 K was recently observed in vacuum. There is a strong indication pointing to even stronger laser-cooling of Yb-doped silica. In light of these results, a radiation-balanced fiber laser in which cooling from spontaneous emission offsets waste heat generation appears more feasible than before. We will discuss the possibility of a radiation-balanced fiber laser, the similarities and differences with the conventional fiber lasers, and performance issues.
KEYWORDS: Silica, Glasses, Luminescence, High power lasers, Optical fibers, Optical amplifiers, High power fiber amplifiers, Absorption, High power fiber lasers, Fiber lasers
Anti-Stokes fluorescence cooling of a Yb-doped silica glass optical fiber preform is achieved using a high-power laser in a double-pass configuration. The coherent laser beam illuminates the silica glass preform in the red tail of its absorption spectrum, and the heat is carried out by anti-Stokes fluorescence of the blue-shifted photons. The high-purity Yb-doped silica glass preform has low parasitic absorption and is codoped with modifiers to mitigate the quenching-induced non-radiative decay for sufficiently high concentrations of Yb ions in silica glass. Therefore, sufficiently large laser absorption could be achieved to observe cooling while maintaining a near-unity external quantum efficiency.
We report the observation of anti-Stokes fluorescence cooling of Yb-doped silica glass by 0.7 degrees Celsius. We conduct a detailed investigation of the cooling parameters of this glass, including the wavelength dependence of the cooling efficiency as a function of the wavelength and also the parasitic absorption of the pump laser. The measurements are performed on three different glass samples with different compositions and cooling is observed in all samples to varying degrees. The results highlight the possibility of using Yb-doped silica glass for radiation-balancing in fibers. Radiation-Balancing is a viable technique for heat mitigation in lasers and amplifiers.
Nonlinear effects and transverse mode instabilities (TMI) limit power scaling of single-mode fiber lasers. To overcome these limitations not only the fiber design but also laser relevant properties of the actively doped material itself need to be optimized. By being able to fabricate Yb-doped fibers for high power applications in-house, we have direct access to laser relevant material parameters.We fabricated fibers using three different co-doping systems, namely Yb:Al:P, Yb:Al:F, and Yb:Al:F:Ce. Afterwards we characterized and compared their laser relevant properties. All three co-doping systems showed nearly identical background losses and absorption cross-sections. In contrast, we found that the PD losses and the factor between PD losses @633nm and the laser wavelength range (1μm) to be significantly different. The retrieved characterization results were implemented into our simulations tool in order to improve the reliability of predictions. Finally, we characterized the fibers in kW-amplifier setups according to their power scaling limits, especially the TMI threshold. This cycle of fiber fabrication, characterization, and simulation enabled us to identify the impact of individual fiber parameters on the TMI threshold. We demonstrated that the impact of PD loss leads to a reductions of the TMI threshold for Yb:Al:F co-doping system of 13% to 23% (depending on the Yb-concentration). The PD loss for the two other systems was proved to be significantly lower and was found to have no impact on the TMI threshold. We experimentally proved that your in-house Yb:Al:P and Yb:Al:F:Ce fibers performed like PD-free fibers.
In this contribution the influence of fabrication technique (solution doping, gas-phase doping) and the choice of suitable material systems (Al, P, Yb:SiO2 and Al, F, Yb:SiO2) for high power fiber laser materials on their optical properties is analyzed. The materials under analysis contain low amounts of codopants (Yb < 0.15 mol%, other <1.2 mol%). The effects on refractive index, attenuation, absorption and emission cross section as well as on photodarkening are addressed. The main part concerns with the analysis of photodarkening, in fact the evolution of individual defect centers are spectrally and temporally investigated by means of 2D curve fitting. It is suggested that this spectro-temporal fitting procedure can lead to new insights in the development of photodarkening on a level of the defects themselves.
With their advantages like good beam quality, easy thermal management, high robustness and compact size, fiber lasers are one of the most promising solid state laser concepts for high power scaling with excellent beam quality. One issue of further power scaling is the reduction of nonlinear effects, especially Raman scattering, which consequently led to increased mode field areas. However, for large mode area fibers, new challenges, namely transversal mode instabilities (TMI) have to be taken into account. Beside our investigations in the power scaling of ytterbium doped fiber amplifiers up to 4.4kW output power, we present our investigations of the TMI threshold in dependence on bend diameter and absorption length of a well-known, commercial fiber. Within this scope, we used a 13m piece of the fiber and gradually reduced the bend diameter from 60cm slightly below 14cm within a pump wavelength of 976nm. Furthermore, we increased the fiber length to 30 m, presuming the bend diameter of 14 cm and all experimental conditions. However, in a next step, we detuned the pump wavelength up to 980 nm in order to increase the pump absorption length As a result, we achieved 2.9kW of single mode output at a bend diameter of 14cm. The 4.4kW result was obtained with a separately manufactured low-NA fiber, allowing for a slope efficiency of 90% with regards to the absorbed pump light and an extremely temporal stability.
We present the fabrication and properties of active fiber laser materials fabricated by a newly developed solution doping technique. The contribution focusses on Aluminum, Phosphorus, Ytterbium as well as Boron doped SiO2 for the use as fiber laser material. More specifically low doping concentration in the vicinity of the molar ratio of Al2O3:P2O5 = 1:1 will be elucidated. The effect of fabrication parameters on optical properties like refractive index, absorption and emission properties will be covered. Currently it is possible to achieve cw output powers greater than 4 kW using Al, P, Yb doped fibers fabricated with this method. Fibers additionally codoped with Boron are as well suitable for kW class applications as well.
KEYWORDS: Fiber amplifiers, Solid state lasers, Single mode fibers, Manufacturing, Fabrication, Doping, Step index fibers, High power fiber amplifiers, Amplifiers, Fiber lasers
Fiber amplifiers are representing one of the most promising solid state laser concepts, due to the compact setup size, a simple thermal management and furthermore excellent beam quality. In this contribution, we report on the latest results from a low-NA, large mode area single mode fiber with a single mode output power beyond 4 kW without any indication of mode instabilities or nonlinear effects and high slope efficiency. Furthermore, we quantify the influence of the bending diameter of our manufactured low NA fiber on the average core loss by an OFDR measurement and determine the optimal bending diameter in comparison to a second fiber with a slightly changed NA. The fibers used in the experiments were fabricated by MCVD technology combined with the solution doping technique. The investigation indicates the limitation of the step index fiber design and its influence on the use in high power fiber amplifiers. We demonstrate, that even a slightly change in the core NA crucially influences the minimum bending diameter of the fiber and has to be taken into account in applications. The measured output power represents to the best of our knowledge the highest single mode output power of an amplifier fiber ever reported on.
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