Publications Details

High-power all-fiber passively Q-switched laser using a doped fiber as a saturable absorber: Numerical simulations

Soh, Daniel B.; Bisson, Scott E.; Patterson, Brian D.; Moore, Sean M.

We report a design for a power-scalable all-fiber passively Q-switched laser that uses a large mode area Yb-doped fiber as a gain medium adiabatically tapered to an unpumped single-mode Yb-doped fiber, which serves as a saturable absorber. Through the use of a comprehensive numerical simulator, we demonstrate a passively Q-switched 1030nm pulsed laser with 14 ns pulse duration and 0:5 mJ pulse energy operating at 200 kHz repetition rate. The proposed configuration has a potential for orders of magnitude of improvement in both the pulse energies and durations compared to the previously reported result. The key mechanism for this improvement relates to the ratio of the core areas between the pumped inverted large mode area gain fiber and the unpumped doped singlemode fiber. © 2011 Optical Society of America.