Highly-efficient, high-energy pulse-burst Yb-doped fiber laser with transform limited linewidth

Abstract

A 1um fiber laser outputting high energy (>1mJ) pulse-bursts with high peak powers (>15kW) and narrow linewidth (<300MHz) is an attractive pump source for tunable periodically poled crystal (PPx) based OPA's which are used in gas sensing, imaging and communication applications. Here a turn-key 1064nm PM Yb-doped fiber amplifier capable of generating high pulse burst energies with transform limited linewidth is presented. The ~20W average power capable laser is optimized for high energy (0.5-2mJ) and high peak power (>10kW) operation at low duty cycles (<0.1%). The laser is capable of operating at >10x the saturation energy level of the final stage gain fiber and achieves a high level of pulse-to-pulse peak power uniformity within pulse-burst. Stimulated Brillion Scattering (SBS) limited micro pulse energy up to 40uJ is achieved and SBS dependence on micro pulse width and separation are characterized. High wall plug efficiency (>20%) for the FPGA controlled system is maintained by temporal and spectral ASE suppression and by spreading the necessary pulse pre-shaping losses (~12dB) to three different amplitude modulation points in the amplifier chain.

The challenges of measuring methane from space with a LIDAR

“…The airborne IPDA lidar used two different laser transmitters. The first was an Optical Parametric Amplifier (OPA) 37,38 and the second was an Optical Parametric Oscillator (OPO) 39 . Only one laser transmitter was used at a time by using a movable mirror to select the desired transmitter.…”

Methane optical density measurements with an integrated path differential absorption lidar from an airborne platform

“…The pump laser is a custom burst-mode Yb fiber laser from Fibertek Inc., based on a master oscillator power amplifier configuration. 38 The pump laser was optimized for high peak power and generated 600 μJ in a burst pulse. Each burst pulse consists of 20 individual 3 ns pulses separated by 85 ns with the individual pulse energies in the burst varying from 2 to 10 μJ.…”