High-Power $\hbox{Yb}^{{\bm 3}{\bm +}}$-Doped Phosphate Fiber Amplifier

Abstract

We report on the development of novel high-power light sources utilizing a Yb³⁺-doped phosphate fiber as the gain element. This host presents several key benefits over silica, particularly much higher Yb₂ O₃ concentrations (up to 26 wt%), a 50% weaker stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) gain cross section, and the absence of observable photodarkening even at high population inversion. These properties result in a greatly increased SBS threshold compared to silica fibers, and therefore, potentially much higher output powers out of either a multimode large mode area or a single-mode fiber, which means in the latter case a higher beam quality. To quantify these predictions, we show through numerical simulations that double-clad phosphate fibers should produce as much as ~ 700 W of single-frequency output power in a step index, single-mode core. As a step in this direction, we report a short phosphate fiber amplifier doped with 12 wt% Yb₂ O₃ that emits 16 W of single-frequency single-mode output. We also describe a single-mode phosphate fiber laser with a maximum output power of 57 W. The laser slope efficiency is currently limited by the fairly high fiber loss ( ~ 3 dB/m). Measurements indicate that 77% of this loss originates from impurity absorption, and the rest from scattering.