Pulsed thulium-doped silica fiber laser operating at a wavelength of 1994.8 nm was developed. The laser was fast gain-switched by 1.55-μm radiation generated from a fiber amplifier system seeded by a directly modulated distributed feedback semiconductor laser. The Tm-doped fiber laser delivered stable nanosecond pulses at a repetition rate ranging from 50 kHz to 300 kHz. The maximum average output power as high as 1.08 W with a slope efficiency of 49% for the repetition rate of 100 kHz was reported. The shortest stable pulses recorded had a width of (20-25) ns and the energy of <15 μJ. The laser system was developed in all-fiber architecture, thus providing robustness, compactness, high insensitivity to atmospheric conditions (dust, vibrations, humidity).

Date Published: 22 January 2013
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 8702, Laser Technology 2012: Progress in Lasers, 87020L (22 January 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2011696

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8702:
Laser Technology 2012: Progress in Lasers
Wieslaw L Wolinski; Zdzislaw Jankiewicz; Ryszard S. Romaniuk, Editor(s)