Fiber design for high-power low-cost Yb:Al-doped fiber laser operating at 980nm

Abstract

We investigated an Yb:Al-doped depressed-clad hollow optical fiber (DCHOF) for cladding-pumped 980nm laser operation. With a careful design, the nonzero fundamental-mode cutoff characteristics of a DCHOF allows the competing 1030-1060nm emission to be filtered out, despite being quite close to 980nm. The laser yielded over 3W of output power in a diffraction limited beam (M -parameter degrades to 2.7, as a result of increased cladding-mode lasing, as the cladding thickness is reduced