High power, fixed and tunable wavelength, Grating-free Cascaded Raman fiber Lasers

Cascaded Raman lasers enable high powers at various wavelength bands inaccessible with conventional rare-earth doped lasers. The input and output wavelengths of conventional implementations are fixed by the constituent fiber gratings necessary for cascaded Raman conversion. We demonstrate here, a simple architecture for high power, fixed and wavelength tunable, grating-free, cascaded Raman conversion between different wavelength bands. The architecture is based on the recently proposed distributed feedback Raman lasers. Here, we implement a module which converts the Ytterbium band to the eye-safe 1.5micron region. We demonstrate pump-limited output powers of over 30W in fixed and continuously wavelength tunable configurations.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, final versio

High-power, cascaded random Raman fiber laser with near complete conversion over wide wavelength and power tuning

Cascaded Raman fiber lasers based on random distributed feedback (RDFB) are proven to be wavelength agile, enabling high powers outside rare-earth doped emission windows. In these systems, by simply adjusting the input pump power and wavelength, high-power lasers can be achieved at any wavelength within the transmission window of optical fibers. However, there are two primary limitations associated with these systems, which in turn limits further power scaling and applicability. Firstly, the degree of wavelength conversion or spectral purity (percentage of output power in the desired wavelength band) that can be achieved is limited. This is attributed to intensity noise transfer of input pump source to Raman Stokes orders, which causes incomplete power transfer reducing the spectral purity. Secondly, the output power range over which the high degree of wavelength conversion is maintained is limited. This is due to unwanted Raman conversion to the next Stokes order with increasing power. Here, we demonstrate a high-power, cascaded Raman fiber laser with near complete wavelength conversion over a wide wavelength and power range. We achieve this by culmination of two recent developments in this field. We utilize our recently proposed filtered feedback mechanism to terminate Raman conversion at arbitrary. wavelengths, and we use the recently demonstrated technique (by J Dong and associates) of low-intensity noise pump sources (Fiber ASE sources) to achieve high-purity Raman conversion. Pump-limited output powers >34W and wavelength conversions >97% (highest till date) were achieved over a broad - 1.1 mu m to 1.5 mu m tuning range. In addition, high spectral purity (>90%) was maintained over a broad output power range (>15%), indicating the robustness of this laser against input power variations. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreemen

Raman based power combining and wavelength conversion of high power ytterbium fiber lasers

In this work, we demonstrate an architecture to perform Raman-based power combining and simultaneous wavelength conversion of two independently controlled high-power Ytterbium doped fiber lasers operating at different wavelengths into a single laser line at the 1.5-micron band. Specifically, we have been able to achieve an in-band output power of similar to 99W with a conversion of similar to 64% of the quantum limited efficiency. This power combining is illustrated for different cases of the input wavelengths of the Ytterbium fiber laser. In each case, we have been able to demonstrate a power combining of >87 W in the final 1.5-micron band, with more than 85% of the fraction of the power residing in the final desired band

All passive architecture for high efficiency cascaded Raman conversion

Cascaded Raman fiber lasers have offered a convenient method to obtain scalable, high-power sources at various wavelength regions inaccessible with rare-earth doped fiber lasers. A limitation previously was the reduced efficiency of these lasers. Recently, new architectures have been proposed to enhance efficiency, but this came at the cost of enhanced complexity, requiring an additional low-power, cascaded Raman laser. In this work, we overcome this with a new, all-passive architecture for high-efficiency cascaded Raman conversion. We demonstrate our architecture with a fifth-order cascaded Raman converter from 1117nm to 1480nm with output power of similar to 64W and efficiency of 60%. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreemen

Observation of a rainbow of visible colors in a near infrared cascaded Raman fiber laser and its novel application as a diagnostic tool for length resolved spectral analysis

In this work, we report and analyse the surprising observation of a rainbow of visible colors, spanning 390nm to 620nm, in silica-based, Near Infrared, continuous-wave, cascaded Raman fiber lasers. The cascaded Raman laser is pumped at 1117nm at around 200W and at full power we obtain -100 W at 1480nm. With increasing pump power at 1117nm, the fiber constituting the Raman laser glows in various hues along its length. From spectroscopic analysis of the emitted visible light, it was identified to be harmonic and sum-frequency components of various locally propagating wavelength components. In addition to third harmonic components, surprisingly, even 2nd harmonic components were observed. Despite being a continuous-wave laser, we expect the phase-matching occurring between the core-propagating NIR light with the cladding-propagating visible wavelengths and the intensity fluctuations characteristic of Raman lasers to have played a major role in generation of visible light. In addition, this surprising generation of visible light provides us a powerful non-contact method to deduce the spectrum of light propagating in the fiber. Using static images of the fiber captured by a standard visible camera such as a DSLR, we demonstrate novel, image-processing based techniques to deduce the wavelength component propagating in the fiber at any given spatial location. This provides a powerful diagnostic tool for both length and power resolved spectral analysis in Raman fiber lasers. This helps accurate prediction of the optimal length of fiber required for complete and efficient conversion to a given Stokes wavelength

Determination and Analysis of Line-Shape Induced Enhancement of Stimulated Brillouin Scattering in Noise Broadened, Narrow Linewidth, High Power Fiber Lasers

We investigate the origin of line-shape induced enhancement of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in narrow linewidth, noise broadened, high-power fiber lasers. A polarization-maintaining seed laser with continuously tunable linewidth (single frequency to >10 GHz), based on white noise modulation was developed for this study. With increasing linewidths, a substantial difference in SBS thresholds was observed depending on the end termination utilized. This observation can be explained by the line-broadened source, having significant power in the Stokes frequency at larger linewidths, seeding the SBS process. Here, SBS threshold for the system terminated with an anti-reflection coated delivery cable is compared with a simple angle cleaved end termination. The influence of end termination on SBS threshold becomes significant with increased linewidths, showing >20% difference in output power between the two cases at ∼10 GHz linewidth. The experiments are complemented by simulations, analyzing relative contributions of Rayleigh scattering and fiber end-facet reflections to SBS. At larger linewidths, due to substantial overlap between laser line-shape and SBS Stokes, with low end-facet reflectivity, Rayleigh is the dominant mechanism, which gives way to end-facet reflections with increasing reflectivity. The Rayleigh contribution is negligible at smaller linewidths, and end-facet reflectivity has a weaker influence than with larger linewidths

A simple technique for direct, high power laser beam profile measurement using thermal imagers

Measuring the profile of a laser beam is of critical importance, especially for high power laser systems. Although different techniques exist to measure the beam profile, owing to the use of optoelectronic detectors or cameras, they primarily work at lower powers and require tapping and attenuating the beam. In this process, there is potential for the diagnostic system affecting the beam quality. In this work, we propose a simple technique which can measure the beam profile at full power using a thermal imager without the need for additional optical components. The method involves taking a thermal image of the beam while it is incident on an absorptive surface such as a thermopile head which is used to measure optical power. In addition, a second image is taken using a focused incidence on the surface at low powers. The second image which is reused provides the point spread function. We then make use of the linearity of the heat equation which allows the deconvolution of the point spread function from the original image to obtain the actual beam profile. In this work, we utilized the technique to directly analyze the beam profile at full power of a 100 W class fiber laser and analyzed deviations from single-modedness. In addition, we utilized offset splices to few-mode fibers to launch higher order modes at the 100W level and demonstrate their direct characterization of multimode nature of the profile. This technique provides a simple alternative, using instruments present in most laser labs for direct, high power laser beam profiling