5 kW-level single-mode fiber amplifier based on low-numerical-aperture fiber

Abstract

A low-numerical-aperture (NA) concept enables large-mode-area fiber with better single-mode operation ability, which is beneficial for transverse mode instability and nonlinear effects suppression. In this contribution, we reported a high-power fiber amplifier based on a piece of self-developed large-mode-area low-NA fiber with a core NA of 0.049 and a core/inner cladding diameter of 25/400 μm. The influence of the pump wavelength and fiber length on the power scaling potential of the fiber amplifier is systematically investigated. As a result, an output of 4.80 kW and a beam quality factor of ∼1.33 were finally obtained, which is the highest output power ever reported in a fiber amplifier exploiting the low-NA fiber. The results reveal that low-NA fibers have superiority in power scaling and beam quality maintenance at high power levels.