SBS-managed high-peak-power nanosecond-pulse fiber-based master oscillator power amplifier

Abstract

We report on a compactly packaged Yb-doped fiber-based laser architecture featuring an actively pulse controlled, single-longitudinal-mode seeder and multistage amplifier chain terminated by a “folded” rod-type photonic crystal fiber. In this laser source, stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is the power-limiting factor, but is managed by phase modulating the seeder with a pseudo-random noise signal. Pulse energy/peak power of $\sim 2\mathrm{mJ}/1.5\mathrm{MW}$ at 10 kHz repetition rate are thus obtained within $\sim 1.55\mathrm{ns}$ pulses of peak spectral brightness $>20\mathrm{kW}{\mathrm{cm}}^{-2}{\mathrm{sr}}^{-1}{\mathrm{Hz}}^{-1}$.

© 2013 Optical Society of America