Compact blue upconversion fiber laser pumped by a diode-pumpable Raman fiber

Summary form only given. Compact and rugged blue laser sources are needed for a wide variety of commercial applications. The thulium-doped ZBLAN fiber laser, which has yielded over 100 mW of blue, appears particularly suitable for such applications. Unfortunately, because of the present unavailability of high-power diode lasers at the appropriate pump wavelengths (1110-1150 nm), scalability of such lasers to higher powers in a reliable and cost effective manner remains a significant problem. This talk demonstrates such a scalable pump source, and its use as a pump for an unoptimized Tm:ZBLAN fiber laser. Our work is based on the use of a Raman fiber laser as a novel pump scheme for the 480-nm Tm:ZBLAN upconversion fiber laser.