A Side-Pump Coupler With Refractive Index Valley Configuration for Fiber Lasers and Amplifiers

Author

Qirong Xiao ; Ping Yan ; Haichui Ren ; Xiao Chen ; Mali Gong

Author_Institution

Mech. Eng. Dept., Precision Instrum., Beijing, China

Volume

31

Issue

16

fYear

2013

fDate

Aug.15, 2013

Firstpage

2715

Lastpage

2722

Abstract

A side-pump coupler with a refractive index valley was investigated theoretically and experimentally. The high pump coupling efficiency and the suppression of backward light propagation due to the refractive index valley are illustrated. Based on the analysis, the (2+1) × 1 pump and signal coupler with both pump coupling efficiency and signal transfer efficiency of > 96% and the BR of 2.82 was implemented, which accompanied with the maximum pump power of 398 W. And based on these couplers, an all-fiber bi-directionally pumping MOPA laser with an output power of 256 W and optical-optical efficiency of 80.5% was achieved in the experiment.

Keywords

laser beams; optical fibre amplifiers; optical fibre couplers; optical fibre theory; optical pumping; power amplifiers; refractive index; all-fiber bidirectionally pumping MOPA laser; backward light propagation; fiber amplifiers; high pump coupling efficiency; laser output power; maximum pump power; optical-optical efficiency; power 256 W; power 398 W; refractive index valley configuration; side-pump coupler; signal coupler; signal transfer efficiency; Couplers; Couplings; Fiber lasers; Laser excitation; Optical fiber amplifiers; Optical fiber couplers; Refractive index; Refractive index valley; side-pump coupler;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Lightwave Technology, Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0733-8724

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JLT.2013.2271910

Filename

6557078