Diode-pumped 1.7-W erbium 3-/spl mu/m fiber laser

Author

Jackson, S.D. ; King, T.A. ; Pollnau, M.

Author_Institution

Schuster Lab., Univ. of Manchester Inst. of Sci. & Technol., UK

Volume

2

fYear

1999

fDate

Aug. 30 1999-Sept. 3 1999

Firstpage

537

Abstract

We follow a theoretical proposal to scale the output power of the erbium 3-/spl mu/m fiber laser to the 1-W region. Ground-state bleaching and consequent ESA losses are avoided by the combination of 1) a highly erbium-doped fiber and the relatively low pump intensity present in a cladding pumped fiber with 2) an active reduction of the excitation density by energy transfer to a Pr/sup 3+/ codopant. Recently, the first investigation of the validity of this approach has led to 660 mW of output power at 2.7 /spl mu/m under diode pumping.

Keywords

erbium; excited states; fibre lasers; infrared sources; laser transitions; optical fibre cladding; optical pumping; optical saturable absorption; 1.7 W; 2.7 mum; 3 mum; ESA losses; Er-doped 3-/spl mu/m fiber laser; Pr/sup 3+/ codopant; cladding pumped fiber; diode pumping; energy transfer; excitation density; excited state absorption; ground-state bleaching; highly erbium-doped fiber; output power; output power scaling; relatively low pump intensity; Bleaching; Diodes; Energy exchange; Erbium; Erbium-doped fiber lasers; Laser excitation; Laser theory; Power generation; Power lasers; Pump lasers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics, 1999. CLEO/Pacific Rim '99. The Pacific Rim Conference on

Conference_Location

Seoul, South Korea

Print_ISBN

0-7803-5661-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CLEOPR.1999.811558

Filename

811558