A theoretical model for laser cooled continuous-wave fiber amplifier is presented. The amplification process takes place in the Tm3+-doped core of the fluoride ZBLAN (ZrF4-BaF2-LaF3-AlF3-NaF) glass fiber. The cooling process takes place in the Yb3+:ZBLAN fiber cladding. It is shown that for each value of the pump power and the amplified signal there is a distribution of the concentration of the Tm3+ along the length of the fiber amplifier, which provides its athermal operation. The influence of a small deviation in the value of the amplified signal on the temperature of the fiber with the fixed distribution of the Tm3+ions in the fiber cladding is investigated.
The dynamics of the state of polarization in single mode and multimode fiber amplifiers are presented. The experimental results reveal that although the state of polarizations at the output can vary over a large range when changing the temperatures of the fiber amplifiers, the variations are significantly reduced when resorting to the principal states of polarization in single mode fiber amplifiers and principal modes in multimode fiber amplifiers.
We demonstrate a 7-core erbium doped fiber amplifier employing side pumping using tapered multimode fiber. The amplifier has multicore inputs and outputs which can be readily spliced to multicore transmission fiber for amplifying space division multiplexed signals. Gain over 25dB was obtained in each of the cores over a 40-nm bandwidth covering C-band.
We show that nonlinear phase shifts and third-order dispersion can compensate each other in short-pulse fiber amplifiers. In particular, we consider chirped-pulse fiber amplifiers at wavelengths for which the fiber dispersion is normal. The nonlinear phase shift accumulated in the amplifier can be compensated by the third-order dispersion of the combination of a fiber stretcher and grating compressor. A numerical model is used to predict the compensation, and initial experimental results that exhibit the main features of the calculations are presented. In the presence of third-order dispersion…
We numerically model fiber amplifier performance near and slightly above the mode instability threshold. These results are compared with recently published experimental work. Using weakly amplitude modulated pump light we obtain qualitative agreement with the measured instability thresholds, mode switching ranges, pixel power modulations, and modal amplitude modulations.
We use a detailed numerical model of stimulated thermal Rayleigh scattering to compute mode instability thresholds in Tm$^{3+}$-doped fiber amplifiers. The fiber amplifies 2040 nm light using a 790 nm pump. The cross-relaxation process is strong, permitting power efficiencies of 60%. The predicted instability thresholds are compared with those in similar Yb$^{3+}$-doped fiber amplifiers with 976 nm pump and 1060 nm signal, and are found to be higher, even though the heat load is much higher in Tm-doped amplifiers. The higher threshold in the Tm-doped fiber is attributed to its longer signal wa…
A stable, continuous wave, single frequency fiber amplifier system at 1015 nm with 10W output power is presented. It is based on a large mode double clad fiber cooled to liquid nitrogen temperature. The amplified light is frequency quadrupled to 254 nm and used for spectroscopy of the 6^1S - 6^3P transition in mercury.
Using a numerical model we study the frequency dependence of mode coupling gain due to stimulated thermal Rayleigh scattering in step index, Yb doped, fiber amplifiers. The frequency at the gain peak is shown to vary with core size, doping size, population saturation, thermal lensing, fiber coiling, direction of pumping, photodarkening, and pump noise spectra. The predicted frequencies are compared with measured values whenever possible.
We show by numerical modeling that saturation of the population inversion reduces the stimulated thermal Rayleigh gain relative to the laser gain in large mode area fiber amplifiers. We show how to exploit this effect to raise mode instability thresholds by a substantial factor. We also demonstrate that when suppression of stimulated Brillouin scattering and the population saturation effect are both taken into account, counter-pumped amplifiers have higher mode instability thresholds than co-pumped amplifiers for fully Yb$^{3+}$ doped cores, and confined doping can further raise the thresholds…
We show how signal linewidth affects the gain of stimulated thermal Rayleigh scattering (STRS) which is responsible for mode instability in fiber amplifiers. The gain is reduced if the coherence time of the signal is less than the group velocity induced walk off between modes LP$_{01}$ and LP$_{11}$. We derive equations for short pulses, linear chirps, and general periodic cases.
We experimentally analyze the average-power-scaling capabilities of ultrafast, thulium-doped fiber amplifiers. It has been theoretically predicted that thulium-doped fiber laser systems, with an emission wavelength around 2 um, should be able to withstand much higher heat-loads than their Yb-doped counterparts before the onset of transverse mode instability (TMI) is observed. In this work we experimentally verify this theoretical prediction by operating thulium doped fibers at very high heat-load. In separate experiments we analyze the performance of two different large-core, thulium-doped fib…
We report on detailed in-situ distributed temperature measurements inside a high power fiber amplifier. The deducted thermal load and the TMI-threshold of a commercial LMA fiber with 25 micron core and 400 micron cladding was measured at various seed wavelengths. By matching these results with detailed simulations we show that photodarkening has a negligible impact on the thermal load and, therefore, on the TMI threshold in this fiber.
We show by detailed numerical modeling that stimulated thermal Rayleigh scattering can account for the modal instability observed in high power fiber amplifiers. Our model illustrates how the instability threshold power can be maximized by eliminating amplitude and phase modulation of the signal seed and the pump, and by careful launch of the signal seed. We also illustrate the influence of photodarkening and mode specific loss on the threshold.
We present a new scheme for a laser cooled Raman optical fiber amplifier. The heat generated in the process of stimulated Raman scattering is compensated for with laser cooling provided by anti-Stokes fluorescence of ytterbium ions doped in the core of the fiber. The device is pumped with two pump sources. One of the pump sources provides Raman amplification of the signal and does not interact with the ytterbium ions in the core of the fiber. The second pump provides laser cooling of the fiber with anti-Stokes fluorescence of the Yb3+ ions. The proper arrangement of Yb3+distribution can provid…
Kilowatt-level high efficiency all-fiberized Raman fiber amplifier based on pure passive fiber is proposed for the first time in this paper. The laser system is established on master oscillator power amplification configuration while a piece of graded-index passive fiber is utilized as stokes shifting as well as gain medium, which is entirely irrelevant to rare-earth-doped gain mechanism. When the pump power is 1368.8 W, we obtained 1002.3 W continuous-wave laser power at 1060 nm with the corresponding optical-to-optical efficiency of 84%. The beam parameter M2 improves from 9.17 of the pump l…
In this letter, the impact of pump configuration on the modal instabilities (MI) threshold of high power fiber amplifiers is investigated. Using a time dependent computer model based on the optical beam propagation method (BPM), the effect of bidirectional pumping on the MI threshold of high power fiber amplifiers is explored and compared to that of a co-pumped configuration. Simulation results indicate that the bidirectional pumping increases the instabilities threshold by a factor of 30% with respect to the co-pumped scheme. We attribute this threshold enhancement to a weaker strength of the…
Recent experimental results have reported the observation of beam self-cleaning or, more generally, nonlinear beam reshaping in active multimode fibers. In this work we present a numerical analysis of these processes, by considering the ideal case of a diode-pumped signal amplifier made of a graded-index multimode fiber with uniform Yb doping. Simulations confirm that beam cleaning of the signal may take place even in amplifying fibers, that is the absence of beam energy conservation. Moreover, we show how the local signal intensity maxima, which are periodically generated by the self-imaging …
Fiber Link Stabilization with a Multicore Fiber Amplifier
University of Colorado Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校）；National Institute of Standards and Technology（美国国家标准与技术研究院）；KDDI Research, Inc.（KDDI研究所）；Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.（住友电气工业株式会社）；Nokia Bell Labs（诺基亚贝尔实验室）
A Core/Cladding Yb-doped fiber amplifier configuration is presented that relies on anti-Stokes fluorescence cooling for effective heat mitigation in high-power operation. In the proposed design, the inner cladding of the double clad fiber is doped with the same ion as in the core; therefore, the excess heat generated from the background absorption is removed by the anti-Stokes fluorescence in both core and inner cladding. We consider both silica and ZBLAN glasses for the host material in the Core/Cladding Yb-doped fiber amplifier. The model incorporates the spatial profiles of the signal and p…
We present a high power single-frequency ytterbium fiber amplifier system with an output power of 30 W at 1091 nm. The amplifier system consists of two stages, a preamplifier stage in which amplified spontaneous emission is efficiently suppressed (>40 dB) and a high power amplifier with an efficiency of 52 %. Two different approaches of frequency doubling are compared. We achieve 8.6 W at 545.5 nm by single-pass frequency doubling in a MgO-doped periodically poled stoichiometric LiTaO3 and up to 19.3 W at 545.5 nm by frequency doubling with a lithium-triborate (LBO) crystal in an external enha…
We present a passively mode-locked, tunable soliton Ho:fiber ring oscillator, optimized for seeding of Ho:YLF amplifiers. The oscillator is independently tunable in central wavelength and spectral width from 2040 nm to 2070 nm and from 5 nm to 10 nm, respectively. At all settings the pulse energy within the soliton is around 800 pJ. The soliton oscillator was optimized to fully meets the spectral requirements for seeding Ho:YLF amplifiers. Its Kelly sidebands are located outside the amplifier gain spectrum, resulting in a train of about 1 ps long pedestal-free pulses with relative intensity no…
By focusing on a typical emitting wavelength of 1120 nm as an example, we present the first demonstration of a high-efficiency, narrow-linewidth kilowatt-level all-fiber amplifier based on hybrid ytterbium-Raman (Yb-Raman) gains. Notably, two temporally stable, phase-modulated single-frequency lasers operating at 1064 nm and 1120nm, respectively, were applied in the fiber amplifier, to alleviate the spectral broadening of the 1120 signal laser and suppress the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) effect simultaneously. Over 1 kW narrow-linewidth 1120 nm signal laser was obtained with a slope …
We report on the influence of core NA on thermal-induced mode instabilities (MI) in high power fiber amplifiers. Influence of core NA and V-parameter on MI has been investigated numerically. It shows that core NA has larger influence on MI for fibers with smaller core-cladding-ratio, and the influence of core NA on threshold is more obvious when the amplifiers are pumped at 915nm. The dependence of threshold on V-parameter revealed that the threshold increases linearly as V-parameter decreases when V-parameter is larger than 3.5, and the threshold shows exponentially increase as V-parameter de…
We study continuous-wave light propagation through a twisted birefringent single-mode fiber amplifier with saturable nonlinearity. The corresponding coupled-mode system is isomorphic to a non-Hermitian nonlinear dimer, and gives rise to analytic polarization-mode dynamics. It provides an optical simulation of the semi-classical non-Hermitian Bose-Hubbard model, and suggests its use for the design of polarization circulators and filters, as well as sources of polarized light.
Dependence of mode instabilities (MI) on ytterbium dopant concentrations in high power fiber amplifiers has been investigated. It is theoretically shown that, by only varying the fiber length to maintain the same total small-signal pump absorption, the MI threshold is independent of dopant concentration. MI thresholds of gain fibers with ytterbium dopant concentration of 5.93X10^25/m3 and 1.02X10^26/m3 have been measured, which exhibit similar thresholds and agree with theoretical results. The result indicates that heavy doping of active fiber can be adopted to suppress nonlinear effects witho…
A novel method for efficient generation of high power, equalized continuous-wave supercontinuum source in an all conventional silica fiber architecture is demonstrated. Highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) is pumped in its anomalous dispersion region using a novel, high power, L-band laser. The L-band laser encompasses a 6th order cascaded Raman amplifier which is pumped with a high power Ytterbium doped fiber laser and amplifies a low-power, tunable L-band seed source. The supercontinuum generated 35W of power with ~40% efficiency. The Supercontinuum spectrum was measured to have a high degree of fl…
We develop a high-power narrow-linewidth fiber amplifier based on a tapered Yb-doped fiber. In the experiment, the narrow end of the tapered fiber is used as the input port of both pump source and signal light to form a robust all-fiber configuration. The stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is effectively suppressed owing to its gradually increased mode area as well as continuously changed Brillouin frequency shift dependent on the core diameter. As a result, an output power of 260 W without SBS and mode instability (MI) is obtained, with a slope efficiency of 71.3 % and a narrow linewidth o…
We demonstrated all-fiber amplification of 11 ps pulses from a gain-switched laser diode at 1064 nm. The diode was driven at a repetition rate of 40 MHz and delivered 13 $μ$W of fiber-coupled average output power. For the low output pulse energy of 325 fJ we have designed a multi-stage core pumped pre-amplifier in order to keep the contribution of undesired amplified spontaneous emission as low as possible. By using a novel time-domain approach for determining the power spectral density ratio (PSD) of signal to noise, we identified the optimal working point for our pre-amplifier. After the pre…
We estimate the Stokes wave starting power for stimulated thermal Rayleigh scattering (STRS) produced by thermal fluctuations in the fiber core that transiently alter the refractive index profile in the core. A transverse temperature gradient creates a transverse refractive index gradient via the thermo optic effect, and if the fluctuation frequency lies in the STRS gain band, it can couple light from mode LP$_{01}$ to LP$_{11}$ to seed STRS. This spontaneous Rayleigh seed may be stronger than the quantum background and may affect the mode instability thresholds of fiber amplifiers. This new s…
Modeling Light Propagation and Amplification Efficiency in Highly Multimode, Yb-doped Fiber Amplifiers
Adelaide University（阿德莱德大学）；Yale University（耶鲁大学）；OzGrav - Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, Adelaide Node（OzGrav-澳大利亚研究委员会引力波发现卓越中心，阿德莱德节点）；Future Industries Institute（未来产业研究所）
Photonic crystal fibers are used in fiber amplifiers and lasers because of the flexibility in the design of mode area and dispersion. However, these quantities depend strongly on the wavelength. The wavelength dependence of gain, nonlinearity and dispersion are investigated here by including the wavelength dependence explicitly in the nonlinear Schrödinger equation for photonic crystal fibers with varying periods and hole sizes. The effect of the wavelength dependence of each parameter is studied separately as well as combined. The wavelength dependence of the parameters is shown to create asy…
In this work, the spectral evolution properties in single-frequency Raman fiber amplifier (RFA) with different pump manners are analyzed theoretically for the first time based on the gain dynamics. The analysis of gain dynamics reveals that the walk-off effect in counter-pumped manner produces a natural low-pass filter in single-frequency RFA. When applying rare-earth doped fiber lasers as the pump source, the strong temporal fluctuations in the pump source lead to spectral broadening in co-pumped manner, while the natural low-pass filter in countered-pumped case can still ensure single-freque…
In long-haul optical continuous-wave frequency transfer via fiber, remote bidirectional Er$^+$-doped fiber amplifiers are commonly used to mitigate signal attenuation. We demonstrate for the first time the ultrastable transfer of an optical frequency using a remote fiber Brillouin amplifier, placed in a server room along the link. Using it as the only means of remote amplification, on a 660 km loop of installed underground fiber we bridge distances of 250 km and 160 km between amplifications. Over several days of uninterrupted measurement we find an instability of the frequency transfer (Allan…
We present a detailed description of the methods used in our model of mode instability in high-power, rare earth-doped, large-mode-area fiber amplifiers. Our model assumes steady-periodic behavior, so it is appropriate to operation after turn on transients have dissipated. It can be adapted to transient cases as well. We describe our algorithm, which includes propagation of the signal field by fast-Fourier transforms, steady-state solutions of the laser gain equations, and two methods of solving the time-dependent heat equation: alternating-direction-implicit integration, and the Green's funct…
The interplay of such cornerstones of modern nonlinear fiber optics as a nonlinearity, stochasticity and polarization leads to variety of the noise induced instabilities including polarization attraction and escape phenomena harnessing of which is a key to unlocking the fiber optic systems specifications required in high resolution spectroscopy, metrology, biomedicine and telecommunications. Here, by using direct stochastic modeling, the mapping of interplay of the Raman scattering-based nonlinearity, the random birefringence of a fiber, and the pump-to-signal intensity noise transfer has been…
An ultrafast fiber chirped-pulse amplifier comprising 8 coherently combined amplifier channels is presented. The laser delivers 1 kW average power at 1 mJ pulse energy and 260 fs pulse duration. Excellent beam quality and low noise performance are confirmed. The laser has proven suitable for demanding scientific applications. Further power scaling is possible right away using even more amplifier channels
We demonstrate wavelength-wavelength correlations of classical broad-band amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) photons emitted by an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) in a wavelength regime around 1530nm. We then apply these classical correlated photons in the framework of a real-world ghost spectroscopy experiment at a wavelength of 1533nm to acetylene (C2H2) reproducing the characteristic absorption features of the C-H stretch and rotational bands. This proof-of-principle experiment confirms the generalization of an ASE source concept offering an attractive light source for classical ghost…
We study numerically the formation of cascading solitons when femtosecond optical pulses are launched into a fiber amplifier with less energy than required to form a soliton of equal duration. As the pulse is amplified, cascaded fundamental solitons are created at different distances, without soliton fission, as each fundamental soliton moves outside the gain bandwidth through the Raman-induced spectral shifts. As a result, each input pulse creates multiple, temporally separated, ultrashort pulses of different wavelengths at the amplifier output. The number of pulses depends not only on the to…
In this paper, we report an experimental study of noise features of polarized and unpolarized amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) with narrow optical bandwidth, registered from a conventional low-doped erbium fiber. We demonstrate that ASE noise can be considered as train of Gaussian-like pulses with random magnitudes, widths, and inter- pulse intervals. The statistical properties of these three parameters of noise pulsing are analyzed. We also present the results on the influence of ASE noise upon optical spectrum broadening, produced by self-phase modulation at propagating along communicati…
We demonstrate a high power, all-fiber, tunable laser source that can operate in the L-band region. A low power, tunable input laser is amplified with a recently proposed, high efficiency, 6th order cascaded Raman amplifier. The proposed system is scalable and overcomes the limitations of Erbium and Erbium-Ytterbium co-doped fiber lasers for power scaling. A tunable Erbium-Ytterbium co-doped fiber ring laser generating ~0.5W of power and tunable in the 1560-1590 nm wavelength range is utilized as the seed source. The output from the seed laser is amplified to ~24 W using 6th order cascaded Ram…
Phase conjugated master oscillator fiber power amplifier
Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学杭州高等研究院）；Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院上海光学精密机械研究所）
Theory of monochromatic wave field amplification in a waveguide array based on expansion of the wave field in terms of guided array modes is developed. Equations for the expansion coefficients include cross-modal gain, which completely changes behavior of the amplified wave field. Analysis of two-mode amplification reveals new unusual features in characteristics of two-mode amplifier. Instead of unlimited growth of both modes for incoherent fields, one of the modes grows with no limit and suppresses the lower-power mode. Effects associated with the cross-modal gain are illustrated analytically…
We develop from first principles the coupled wave equations that describe polarization-sensitive parametric amplification based on four-wave mixing in standard (randomly birefringent) optical fibers. We show that in the small-signal case these equations can be solved analytically, and permit us to predict the gain experienced by the signal beam as well as its state of polarization (SOP) at the fiber output. We find that, independently of its initial value, the output SOP of a signal within the parametric gain bandwidth is solely determined by the pump SOP. We call this effect of pulling the po…
We use a semi-analytical model of stimulated thermal Rayleigh scattering to present theoretical study of seed power on mode instability with the presence of photodarkening. The behavior of mode instabilities as a function of seed power has been investigated. The nonlinear dependence of the threshold with lower seed powers is ascribed to the influence of gain saturation while the reduction behavior of the threshold with higher seed powers is put down to the effects of photodarkening, which agrees well with the experimental results.
The ability to amplify optical signals is of pivotal importance across science and technology. The development of optical amplifiers has revolutionized optical communications, which are today pervasively used in virtually all sensing and communication applications of coherent laser sources. In the telecommunication bands, optical amplifiers typically utilize gain media based on III-V semiconductors or rare-earth-doped fibers. Another way to amplify optical signals is to utilize the Kerr nonlinearity of optical fibers or waveguides via parametric processes. Such parametric amplifiers of travell…
We report on the design and whole characterization of low-noise and affordable-cost Yb-doped double-clad fiber amplifiers operating at room temperature in the near-infrared spectral region at pulse repetition rate of 160 MHz. Two different experimental configurations are discussed. In the first one, a broadband seed radiation with a transform limited pulse duration of 71 fs, an optical spectrum of 20 nm wide at around 1040 nm, and 20 mW average power is adopted. In the second configuration, the seed radiation is constituted by stretched pulses with a time duration as long as 170 ps, with a 5-n…
Here, we demonstrate all-fiber direct amplification of 11 picosecond pulses from a gain-switched laser diode at 1063nm. The diode was driven at a repetition rate of 40MHz and delivered 13$μ$W of fiber-coupled average output power. For the low output pulse energy of 0.33pJ we have designed a multi-stage core pumped preamplifier based on single clad Yb-doped fibers in order to keep the contribution of undesired amplified spontaneous emission as low as possible and to minimize temporal and spectral broadening. After the preamplifier we reduced the 40MHz repetition rate to 1MHz using a fiber coupl…
Raman fiber lasers (RFLs) are currently promising and versatile light sources for a variety of applications. So far, operations of high power and brightness-enhanced RFLs have absorbed enormous interests along with rapid progress. Nevertheless, the stable Raman lasing at high power levels remains challenged by the thermal effects. In an effort to realize more effective thermal management in high power RFLs, here we demonstrate, for the first time, an all-fiberized RFA employing metal-coated passive fiber enabling high power lasing. By employing aluminum to the cladding of graded-index (GRIN) p…
