A CW Raman fiber laser (RFL) operating below 1 μm with direct pumping by a high-power multimode laser diode at 938 nm has been demonstrated for the first time. The laser cavity is formed by a normally cleaved fiber end and a highly reflective fiber Bragg grating (FBG) inscribed at the opposite end of a 4.5 km long multimode graded-index fiber. Low-index transverse modes are generated at the first Stokes wavelength of ∼980 nm with an output power of ∼3 W, while the second Stokes wave at 1025 nm also starts to be generated, thus limiting the 980 nm output.

A random lasing based on Rayleigh scattering (RS) in a passive fiber directly pumped by a high-power laser diode (LD) has been demonstrated. Owing to the RS-based random distributed feedback (RDFB) the low-quality LD beam (938 nm) is converted into the high-quality laser output (980 nm). Because of the relatively low excess above the threshold with the available LD, the RDFB laser output is not stationary and limited in power at the 0.5 W level. In the used gradient-index fiber, the output beam has 4.5 lower divergence as compared with the pump beam thus demonstrating a new way for development of high-power fiber lasers with high-quality output.

This Letter presents what we believe is the first experimental study of frequency doubling of a Raman fiber laser (RFL) with random distributed feedback (RDFB) in an MgO:PPLN crystal. We compared two laser configurations, each with a half-open cavity. The cavity contained either a broadband Sagnac mirror or a narrowband fiber Bragg grating (FBG). We found that spectral broadening in the studied configurations of the RDFB RFLs differed from that found in a conventional RFL with a linear cavity, as well as from each other. We also compared the second harmonic generation (SHG) efficiency for these three types of lasers. The highest SHG efficiency was obtained for the RDFB RFL with the FBG delivering >100  mW power at 654 nm.

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