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1-kilowatt CW all-fiber laser oscillator pumped with wavelength-beam-

combined diode stacks

Article  in  Optics Express · January 2012

DOI: 10.1364/OE.20.003296 · Source: PubMed

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 1-kilowatt CW all-fiber laser oscillator pumped
with wavelength-beam-combined diode stacks
Y. Xiao,1,* F. Brunet,1 M. Kanskar,1 M. Faucher,2 A. Wetter,2 and N. Holehouse2
1
Alfalight, Inc., 1832 Wright Street, Madison, Wisconsin 53704, USA
2
ITF Labs, 400 Montpellier Blvd., Montreal, Quebec H4N 2G7, Canada
*yxiao@alfalight.com

Abstract: We have demonstrated a monolithic cladding-pumped ytterbium-

doped single all-fiber laser oscillator generating 1 kW of CW signal power
at 1080 nm with 71% slope efficiency and near diffraction-limited beam
quality. Fiber components were highly integrated on “spliceless” passive
fibers to promote laser efficiency and alleviate non-linear effects. The laser
was pumped through a 7:1 pump combiner with seven 200-W 91x nm fiber-
pigtailed wavelength-beam-combined diode-stack modules. The signal
power of such a single all-fiber laser oscillator showed no evidence of roll-
over, and the highest output was limited only by available pump power.
©2012 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (140.3510) Lasers, fiber; (140.3480) Lasers, diode-pumped; (140.3615) Lasers,
ytterbium; (140.2010) Diode laser arrays.

References and links

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continuous-wave output power,” Opt. Express 12(25), 6088–6092 (2004).
2. Y. Jeong, A. J. Boyland, J. K. Sahu, S. Chung, J. Nilsson, and D. N. Payne, “Multi-kilowatt single-mode
Ytterbium-doped large-core fiber laser,” J. Opt. Soc. Korea 13(4), 416–422 (2009).
3. V. Gapontsev, D. Gapontsev, N. Platonov, O. Shkurikhin, V. Fomin, A. Mashkin, M. Abramov, and S. Ferin, “2
kW CW ytterbium fiber laser with record diffraction-limited brightness” in Proc. Conference on Lasers and
Electro-Optics Europe 2005, 508.
4. D. Walton, S. Gray, J. Wang, M. Li, X. Chen, A. Liu, L. Zenteno, and A. Crowley, “Kilowatt-level, narrow-
linewidth capable fibers and lasers,” Proc. SPIE 6453, 645314, 645314-10 (2007).
5. J. Edgecumbe, D. Bjork, J. Galipeau, G. Boivin, S. Christianson, B. Samson, and K. Tankala, “Monolithic, turn-
key, 1-kW Yb-doped fiber master oscillator power amplifier,” in Proc. Of Solid State Diode Laser Technology
Review 2008, 193–199.
6. V. Fomin, M. Abramov, A. Ferin, A. Abramov, D. Mochalov, N. Platonov, and V. Gapontsev, “10 kW single
mode fiber laser,” in Proc. of 5th International Symposium on High-Power Fiber Lasers and Their Applications,
St. Petersburg, Russia, Jun. 28- Jul. 1, 2010, Session HPFL-1.3.
7. D. Engin, W. Lu, M. Akbulut, B. McIntosh, H. R. Verdun, and S. Gupta, “1kW CW Yb-fiber-amplifier with
<0.5GHz linewidth and near-diffraction limited beam-quality, for coherent combining application,” Proc. SPIE
7914, 791407, 791407-7 (2011).
8. T. Y. Fan, “Laser beam combining for high-power, high-radiance sources,” IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron.
11(3), 567–577 (2005).
9. J. T. Gopinath, B. Chann, T. Y. Fan, and A. Sanchez-Rubio, “1450-nm high-brightness wavelength-beam
combined diode laser array,” Opt. Express 16(13), 9405–9410 (2008).
10. R. K. Huang, B. Chann, and J. D. Glenn, “Ultra-high brightness, wavelength-stabilized, kW-class fiber-coupled
diode laser,” Proc. SPIE 7918, 791810, 791810-9 (2011).
11. J. Limpert, F. Roser, S. Klingebiel, T. Scheriber, C. Wirth, T. Peschel, R. Eberhardt, and A. Tünnermann, “The
rising power of fiber lasers and amplifiers,” IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron. 13(3), 537–545 (2007).
12. C. Jauregui, J. Limpert, and A. Tünnermann, “On the Raman threshold of passive large mode area fibers,” Proc.
SPIE 7914(791408), 791408 (2011).

1. Introduction
Ytterbium-doped large-core fiber lasers have shown tremendous progress in the last decade in
terms of power scaling, reaching kilowatt and even multi-kilowatt of near diffraction-limited
signal power [1–7]. Relying on their high efficiency, high brightness and superior reliability,
kilowatt-class fiber lasers rapidly increase their market share in defense and industrial
applications. The highest reported signal power of single-mode fiber laser is 10 kW [6], which

#159059 - $15.00 USD Received 1 Dec 2011; revised 18 Jan 2012; accepted 19 Jan 2012; published 27 Jan 2012
(C) 2012 OSA 30 January 2012 / Vol. 20, No. 3 / OPTICS EXPRESS 3296
is uniquely achieved with pumping by fiber lasers. However, all the existing fiber laser
designs are either non-all-fiber approaches [1, 2], pump power of which is coupled in free
space with bulk optics, or use concatenated multi-stage amplifiers [3–7]. It is desirable to
have even compact and monolithic solutions for kilowatt fiber laser and amplifiers. This work
presents a 1 kW single-mode CW all-fiber laser oscillator and explores the limits of current
state-of-the-art fiber components. Because it requires no free-space optics and no hard-to-
obtain isolators used in between multi stages of amplifiers, such an all-fiber single oscillator
architecture is suitable not only for power scaling demonstration of high power fiber
components but also for potential commercialization of monolithic fiber laser enabled with
high-brightness diode pumps.
Advance of high power ytterbium-doped fiber (YDF) lasers is fueled by three major
technologies: high-quality active fibers; high-power passive fiber components, including
pump combiners, fiber Bragg gratings (FBG), isolators, cladding mode strippers and end caps;
and bright diode laser pumps. Ahead of the other two factors, well-developed YDF
technologies are currently not the limitation for power scaling of fiber lasers, such that the
research effort on passive fiber components and diode laser pumps has been intense. Here we
report the results of a 1 kW single-mode CW all-fiber laser oscillator that was built for the
demonstration of passive fiber components capable of handling kilowatt-level pump and
signal power. The 1 kW single-mode (M2 < 1.3) fiber laser output from a 20 µm / 0.06 NA
core has a center wavelength around 1080 nm and slope efficiency (SE) of 71%. Pump power
was launched from the high-reflection (HR) FBG side through a 7:1 tapered fiber bundle
(TFB). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported kilowatt-class all-fiber oscillator
in such a compact architecture with integration of passive fiber components. We also
developed seven 200-W 91x-nm wavelength-beam-combined (WBC) diode-stack pump
modules fiber-pigtailed with 200 µm / 0.22 NA fibers in this work. The typical power
conversion efficiency (PCE) of these pumps is 30%. Both designs and results for pumps and
the fiber laser are discussed in the following sections. Conclusions are drawn in the last
section.
2. Setup and performance of WBC pumps
The fiber laser was pumped with seven wavelength-beam-combined diode laser stack
modules [8–10]. The pump layout in the slow-axis plane and beam footprints modeled with
ZEMAX are shown in Fig. 1. The external cavity consists of a 6-bar micro-channel cooled
diode laser stack, a transform lens of 150-mm effective focal length (EFL), a 2000-line/mm
diffraction grating and an output coupler with 15% reflectivity. The combined output beam is
focused into a 200-µm core / 0.22 NA fiber with a multi-element objective lens of 37 mm
EFL. Each bar in the 6-bar diode laser stack is 1 cm long and contains 19 emitters with 2-mm
cavity length and 20% fill factor. Laser output from each bar is collimated with a fast-axis
collimation (FAC) lens and a slow-axis collimation (SAC) lens array. The reflective gold-
coated diffraction grating used for beam combining is commercially available and has a first
order diffraction efficiency above 90%. The copper substrate of the grating is mounted on a
water-cooled heat sink for dissipating excess heat that causes grating distortion. Emitters in a
bar operate at different center wavelengths due to their displacement along the slow axis,
respected to the axis of the transform lens. Each emitter receives the feedback from the output
coupler in a different first-order diffraction angle. The cylindrical lens transforms the angles
into the displaced locations of emitters. The three beam footprints at locations of transform
lens, output coupler and fiber entrance illustrate the brightness enhancement through
wavelength-beam-combining.
As shown in Fig. 1, we kept the WBC pump layout as a “V” configuration rather than a
“Z” configuration used in [9], by which means we saved a folding mirror and minimized the
cavity length to achieve a relative small form factor, although it was a little more complicated
for alignment. The pump cavity length played a critical role in selection of cavity mode, in
other words, suppression of higher order modes. Large divergence of broad-area laser diode is
one of the issues limiting WBC diode laser arrays and stacks. Because the large divergent

#159059 - $15.00 USD Received 1 Dec 2011; revised 18 Jan 2012; accepted 19 Jan 2012; published 27 Jan 2012
(C) 2012 OSA 30 January 2012 / Vol. 20, No. 3 / OPTICS EXPRESS 3297
beam in the slow axis can be captured not only by the SAC lens in front of the emitter but also
by neighboring lenses, the cross-coupled beam forms a multi-lobed output. The side lobes,
which are higher order cavity modes, can contain up to 50% of the total power, extremely
harmful for fiber coupling due to their larger launching angles than the fiber NA. We
optimized the pump cavity length to the minimum while maintaining a fundamental spatial
mode at the output. The other issue limiting WBC laser arrays and stacks is bar “smile”,
which reduces WBC feedback into individual emitters. The “smile” of our laser bars is
typically smaller than 3 µm.

Fig. 1. Schematic layout of the WBC pumps in the slow-axis plane of the laser diodes. Beam
footprints are modeled with ZEMAX for three locations: cylindrical lens, output coupler and
fiber entrance.

Typical performance of the WBC diode pumps is shown in Fig. 2. L-I curves for WBC
diode laser output and fiber output as well as the total PCE of the fiber-coupled pump module
are depicted in Fig. 2(a). We obtained more than 200 W of output power at 70 A through a
200 µm core / 0.22 NA pigtail fiber. The micro-lensed six-bar stacks have a PCE of about
60%. The optical-to-optical efficiency of the WBC laser cavity is around 55%, and the fiber
coupling efficiency is 90~92%. Since both sides of the fiber pigtail are uncoated, the fiber
coupling loss is mainly caused by Fresnel reflection loss. The total PCE of the pump module
is about 30%. A typical pump spectrum is depicted in Fig. 2(b), showing a spectral width of
16 nm as the result of WBC. Each peak in the spectrum has a width about 0.3 nm (FWHM),
originating from six emitters (one from each bar) at the same position on the slow-axis. The
non-uniformity of peak intensities is mainly due to the stack-up effect of six bar- “smiles”.
The gratings that we tested showed efficiency drop when CW power density was above 500
W/cm2. Such efficiency degradation can be attributed to grating distortion under excess heat.
We set the operating current at 70 A corresponding to more than 200 W of output power and
below 450 W/cm2 of power density on the grating. The total pump power available with the
seven WBC pump modules is nearly 1.5 kW. The center of the spectrum can be slightly tuned
by adjusting the grating angle for maximizing the output power. The center wavelength for
each of the seven pump modules is between 915 nm and 920 nm.

#159059 - $15.00 USD Received 1 Dec 2011; revised 18 Jan 2012; accepted 19 Jan 2012; published 27 Jan 2012
(C) 2012 OSA 30 January 2012 / Vol. 20, No. 3 / OPTICS EXPRESS 3298
 Fig. 2. Typical results of fiber-coupled WBC diode pumps. (a) L-I and PCE curves: WBC
power measured after output coupler (green dashed), fiber output power (blue solid), and PCE
of the fiber-coupled module (red solid); (b) WBC pump spectrum.

3. Experiments and results of the all-fiber laser oscillator

The all-fiber laser oscillator architecture is sketched in Fig. 3. Seven fiber-pigtailed WBC
diode laser pump modules were combined with a 7:1 TFB and launched through the HR-FBG
(integrated in the TFB package) end of the laser cavity. The TFB combined seven 200/220-
µm silica fibers with 0.22 NA cores that were fused and tapered down to match the 20/400-
µm output fiber. This bundle was then spliced to the 20/400-um passive relay fiber on which
an HR FBG was inscribed. Scattering from the fiber splices generates heat and reduces laser
efficiency, such that every splice is a potential reliability issue at the kilowatt power level.
This is especially true in a resonator configuration, where part of the signal light will see
multiple round trips. To promote the efficiency of the fiber laser, we reduced the number of
fiber splices and the length of relay fiber to a minimum. The TFB and HR FBG were
integrated in one high-power package, which eliminated the need for a spliced relay fiber
between the two components. The yielded insertion loss of this integrated combiner was
below 0.2 dB. All other passive fiber components, including cladding mode stripper, tap
monitor, OC FBG and AR-coated end cap, were fabricated on one piece of relay fiber and
also sealed in high-power packages for effective heat sinking. The only two intracavity splices
are located between active and passive fibers, indicated with red crosses in Fig. 3. The gain
fiber is an ytterbium-doped large-mode-area double-clad fiber with a 20 µm/0.06 NA core and
a 400 µm/0.46 NA inner clad. The total cavity length of the fiber laser was minimized with
the highly integrated design, helping to alleviate non-linear effects.

#159059 - $15.00 USD Received 1 Dec 2011; revised 18 Jan 2012; accepted 19 Jan 2012; published 27 Jan 2012
(C) 2012 OSA 30 January 2012 / Vol. 20, No. 3 / OPTICS EXPRESS 3299
 Fig. 3. Architecture of the all-fiber laser oscillator.

Compared with a design compositing both master-oscillator and power amplifier, this
monolithic all-fiber laser oscillator does not require a high-power isolator. Moreover, the
highly integrated design of passive components promotes laser efficiency and reduces non-
linear effects by eliminating intracavity splices and unnecessary cavity length. The intracavity
cladding mode striper reduces the ASE and residual pump in the cladding, maintaining the
reliability for kilowatt operation. We optimized the active-to-passive fiber splices with
assistance of mode field adaptors for LP01 operation of the cavity and coiled the gain fiber
with a minimum diameter of 10 mm, resulting in a single-mode lasing condition. A tap
monitor inserted inside the laser cavity provides an additional means for monitoring and
characterizing the behavior of the fiber laser. The two single-mode fiber taps with 40 dB tap
ratio are connected to an optical spectrum analyzer (OSA) and a photo detector, in order to
monitor spectrum and signal noise level with forward and backward propagating laser beams
coupled from the relay fiber.
The fiber laser was tested up to 1 kW of output signal power with no evidence of roll-
over, shown in Fig. 4(a). The highest output power was restricted only by available pump
power. Pump absorption of the 20/400 µm YDF was characterized using the WBC diode
pumps, so the total residual pump after propagation in the gain fiber could be estimated as
about 50 W at the highest total launched pump power of 1485 W. The SE of fiber laser power
with respect to injected pump power was 71% without taking the residual pump into account,
and the beam quality factor was around 1.3. A spectrum of the fiber laser at 1-kW of signal
power measured with scans of 0.02-nm resolution is overlaid on the wavelength dependent
reflectivity of the OC FBG, shown in Fig. 4(b). The center wavelengths matched at 1080.3
nm, but the laser spectrum with a 2-nm bandwidth (FWHM) was broadened from the 0.15-nm
(FWHM) OC FBG due to nonlinear effects, such as self-phase modulation.

#159059 - $15.00 USD Received 1 Dec 2011; revised 18 Jan 2012; accepted 19 Jan 2012; published 27 Jan 2012
(C) 2012 OSA 30 January 2012 / Vol. 20, No. 3 / OPTICS EXPRESS 3300
 Fig. 4. Test results of the 1-kW all-fiber laser oscillator. (a) Fiber laser output power (green
square) and beam quality factor, M2 (red circle); (b) spectrum of fiber laser output at 1 kW
overlaid on the OC reflectivity (The fiber laser spectrum was digitized from an OSA image).

Nonlinear effects resulting from stimulated inelastic scattering processes, such as

stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) and stimulated Raman scattering (SRS), are usual
limitations for the power scaling of rare-earth-doped fiber systems. The performance of
single-frequency fiber lasers is typically limited by SBS. The SBS threshold increases
substancially with emission bandwidth, such that SRS usually dominates when the spectral
bandwidth exceeds ~0.5 GHz [11]. A good approximation for the SRS threshold power is
given by [12]

 Aeff 
20.3 − ln β + ln  
 g R Leff
PthSRS =  A , (1)
eff
g R Leff

where 1/β is the ratio between Raman power and signal at the threshold fiber output (1% is a
convenient value for high power fiber lasers), Aeff is the effective mode area of the guided
fiber mode, gR is the peak Raman gain coefficient (gR = 1 × 10−13 m/W in fused silica at a
pump wavelength of 1 µm), and Leff is the effective fiber length. The threshold power for SRS
in our system can be estimated with Eq. (1) as 1.8 kW, which is well above the 1-kW value.
4. Conclusion
We described the monolithic architecture and the performance of a 1-kW single-mode CW
all-fiber laser oscillator pumped with WBC diode laser pumps. The fiber laser showed no
evidence of roll-over in laser output power even at the highest launched pump power (~1.5
kW). The output power was limited only by available pump power in this work, and we
demonstrated the 1-kW signal power handling capability for the fiber laser components.
Further power scaling of such an all-fiber laser and exploration of component damage
threshold can be achieved with improving pump brightness and adding counter directional
pumping. A “spliceless” cavity, with FBGs inscribed on gain fiber directly, will be the
ultimate goal for efficiency promotion.
Acknowledgments
This work is sponsored by the High Energy Joint Technology Office under contract number
FA9451-08-D-0201/002. Opinions, interpretations, conclusions, and recommendations are
those of the authors and are not necessarily endorsed by the United States government.

#159059 - $15.00 USD Received 1 Dec 2011; revised 18 Jan 2012; accepted 19 Jan 2012; published 27 Jan 2012
(C) 2012 OSA 30 January 2012 / Vol. 20, No. 3 / OPTICS EXPRESS 3301

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