13-W average power ultrafast filter laser

The main technological challenge of achieving 10´s of watts of average power from a fiber-based ultrashort-pulse system is essentially determined by the limited pulsed peak-powers in a fiber core. Indirectly, this limitation also sets significant constrains on the fiber amplifier pumping, since the limited pulse-propagation length also limits pump-power absorption in a tiber amplifier. As a result, all previous high-power femtosecond tiber systems has been limited to ~ l-2 W of average power. Here we demonstrate that single-mode propagation in suitably designed large-size and multimodc core fibers as well as the use of parabolic pulses in positive dispersion fiber amplifiers allows to scale-up the output powers to beyond 10W. This constitutes more than an order of magnitude increase compared to earlier high-power ultrafast fiber systems. We have demonstrated a very simple approach for the generation of more than I 0 W of average power from an ultrafast fiber system. Achieved powers were merely limited by the available pump power rather than nonlinear effects in the fiber core. hnthennore, our analysis indicates that fiber cores larger that 50μm could be used for single-mode propagation, allowing for even higher peak and coupled pump powers. Equally, significantly longer chirped pulses can he employed in the scheme reported here. Consequently, the demonstrated approach is suitable lor further scaling to significantly higher output powers at green and infrared wavelengths in futme tiber systems.