Towards all-fiber structure pulsed mid-infrared laser by gas-filled hollow-core fibers

We report here on a diode-pumped pulsed mid-infrared laser source based on gas-filled hollow-core fibers(HCFs)towards an all-fiber structure by the tapering method. The pump laser is coupled into an acetylene-filled HCF through a tapered single-mode fiber. By precisely tuning the wavelength of the diode to match different absorption lines of acetylene near 1.5 μm, mid-infrared emission around 3.1–3.2 μm is generated. With 2 m HCFs and3 mbar acetylene gas, a maximum average power of 130 m W is obtained with a laser slope efficiency of ~24%.This work provides a potential scheme for all-fiber mid-infrared fiber gas lasers.

Towards high-power mid-IR light source tunable from 3.8 to 4.5 µm by HBr-filled hollow-core silica fibres

Fibre lasers operating at the mid-IR have attracted enormous interest due to the plethora of applications in defence,security,medicine,and so on.However,no continuous-wave(CW)fibre lasers beyond 4μm based on rare-earth-doped fibres have been demonstrated thus far.Here,we report efficient mid-IR laser emission from HBr-filled silica hollow-core fibres(HCFs)for the first time.By pumping with a self-developed thulium-doped fibre amplifier seeded by several diode lasers over the range of 1940–1983 nm,narrow linewidth mid-IR emission from 3810 to 4496 nm has been achieved with a maximum laser power of about 500 mW and a slope efficiency of approximately 18%.To the best of our knowledge,the wavelength of 4496 nm with strong absorption in silica-based fibres is the longest emission wavelength from a CW fibre laser,and the span of 686 nm is also the largest tuning range achieved to date for any CW fibre laser.By further reducing the HCF transmission loss,increasing the pump power,improving the coupling efficiency,and optimizing the fibre length together with the pressure,the laser efficiency and output power are expected to increase significantly.This work opens new opportunities for broadly tunable high-power mid-IR fibre lasers,especially beyond 4μm.

Highly efficient and stable coupling of kilowatt-level continuous wave laser into hollow-core fibers

Fiber gas lasers based on gas-filled hollow-core fibers(HCFs)perfectly combine the advantages of fiber lasers and gas lasers and have obtained fast development in the past years.However,stable and efficient coupling of high-power pump lasers into the HCFs is one of the key problems to be solved.In this paper,we study the coupling of high-power continuous wave fiber lasers into anti-resonant HCFs through an end-cap.By optimizing the splicing parameters,a maximum laser power of 1167 W was injected into the 1-m-long HCFs,and 1021W was obtained at the output end,giving a total transmission efficiency of〜87.5%.A more than 1 h test showed the stability of such a coupling method.Meanwhile,the laser beam quality was well maintained.This work opens new opportunities for stable and highly efficient coupling of high-power lasers into HCFs,which is significant for its applications in many other fields besides high-power fiber gas lasers,such as high-power laser delivering.

1.56 μm and 2.86 μm Raman lasers based on gas-filled anti-resonance hollow-core fiber

We report here a single-pass 1.56 μm fiber gas Raman laser in a deuterium-filled hollow-core fiber and a 2.86 μm cascade fiber gas Raman laser with methane in the second stage.The maximum output powers at 1.56 and 2.86 μm are 27 and 8.5 m W with Raman conversion efficiency of 30% and 42%, respectively.The results offer a new method to produce a 1.5 μm fiber source and prove the potential of the cascade fiber gas Raman laser in extending the available wavelength.

10 watt-level tunable narrow linewidth 1.5μm all-fiber amplifier

We report here a high-power, wavelength tunable and narrow linewidth 1.5 μm all-fiber laser amplifier based on a tunable diode laser and Er-Yb co-doped fibers. The laser wavelength can be precisely tuned from 1535 nm to 1580 nm, which covers many absorption lines of mid-infrared laser gases, such as C2 H2, HCN, CO, and HI. The maximum laser power is >11 W, and the linewidth is about 200–300 MHz, which is close to the absorption linewidth of the above-mentioned gases. This work provides a suitable pump source for high-power wavelength tunable mid-infrared fiber gas lasers based on low-loss hollow-core fibers.