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We report an experimental observation of multiple dissipative soliton (DS) operation states in an all-normal-dispersion passively mode-locked Yb-doped fibre laser, including DS bound and oscillating states. In the bound state, multiple DSs up to 11 can coexist in the cavity. In the oscillating state, the DSs' movements are not purely random and three typical states are generalised and illustrated. A single-pulse mode-locked state is established at a high pump power by carefully adjusting the polarisation controllers. The broad spectrum indicates that it may be noise-like pulses, which can serve as a pump to generate a supercontinuum.

3 kW and 4 kW all-fiber distributed side-pumped oscillators, based on a distributed side-coupled cladding-pumped fiber, are demonstrated for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. Using three cascaded gain sections, the 2.95 kW output power with 77.4% slope efficiency and more than 52 dB suppression of stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) is obtained. However, the power scaling is mainly limited by the pump power. By adding one more gain section, the output power is scaled up to 3.96 kW, the slope efficiency is about 73.0% and the SRS suppression is about 48 dB. The transverse mode instability is observed in the 4 kW fiber oscillator, and its dependence on the output power is also measured in experiment.

With an increasing output power, the power scaling of monolithic fiber laser oscillators faces the severe limitations of stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) and the transverse mode instability (TMI) effect. In this work, we report a high power monolithic fiber laser oscillator with a maximum output power of 5.2 kW, which is realized with a trade-off design between the SRS and TMI. The monolithic fiber laser oscillator is constructed with ytterbium-doped fiber with a core/inner cladding diameter of 25/400 µm and corresponding home-made FBG. High-power 915 nm laser diodes are employed as a pump source and are distributed in a bidirectional-pump configuration. By optimizing the bidirectional pump proportion, the monolithic fiber laser oscillator is scaled up to 5.2 kW with a slope efficiency of ~63%. Operating at 5.2 kW, the intensity of the Raman stokes light is ~22 dB below the signal laser and the beam quality (M2-factor) is ~2.2. To the best of our knowledge, this is a record high power for monolithic fiber laser oscillators.

For the first time ever, we numerically demonstrated a random distributed feedback fiber laser in the mid-infrared regime by using fluoride fibers pumped at 2.05 µm. The relation of the total loss for the Rayleigh scattering coefficient in fluoride fibers at the 2.05 µm wavelength band was derived theoretically. The numerical model was established to optimize the fiber length and pump power to maximize the first-Stokes output power. A fiber length of 68 m with a maximum available 200 W pump power is recommended to obtain a relatively large output power. The maximum obtained first-Stokes power was 137.6 W, and the conversion efficiency was 71%. In addition, the influences of the reflectance of the fiber Bragg grating on the output properties were also investigated.

We experimentally demonstrate a high average power coherent polarization beam combining system of two-channel femtosecond fiber chirped-pulse amplifiers based on our all fiber active control method comprising an active phase locking loop and adaptive control loop of optical path drift for the first time. A coherent combining efficiency of 87% is achieved at the combined power of 4.3 W, which drops with the average power scaling. The combined average power finally reaches 313 W with a coherent combining efficiency of 79% and the corresponding compressed pulse duration is 827 fs. The reasons for the loss in combining efficiency are experimentally investigated. Further power scaling is restricted by the deterioration of the laser mode, but it is still possible if the performance of the single femtosecond fiber chirped-pulse amplifier is improved.

The superfluorescent Yb-doped fiber source operating near 980 nm is studied. The design requirement is theoretically discussed aiming to suppress the amplified spontaneous emission around 1030 nm in the 980-nm superfluorescent fiber source. Based on the theoretical study, a multi-Watt, all-fiber, bi-directional, pumped, superfluorescent source operating near 980 nm is designed and experimentally demonstrated for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. The recorded 8.38-W combined output power is obtained with a 3-dB bandwidth about 3.5 nm. The power scaling of the 980-nm superfluorescent fiber source is limited by the parasitic laser oscillation.

A 2 kW pump-light-stripper-free all-fiber distributed-pumping oscillator fabricated with the distributed side-coupled cladding-pumped Yb-doped fiber is demonstrated for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. An output power of 1969 W with a slope efficiency of 72.2% is obtained. By utilizing the final-section counter-pumping scheme, pure output spectra free from residual pump light are obtained without using any pump light stripper, which demonstrates that the pump light stripper is not indispensable for this configuration. Besides, no stimulated Raman scattering component is observed in the output spectra. The laser has the M 2 factor ranging from 2.0 to 2.6. We believe that the pertinent results are helpful and valuable for designing high-power fiber laser systems.

In this paper we demonstrate an all-fiberized superfluorescent fiber source that has a maximal output power of 2.53 kW and is based on a single-stage power amplification configuration. The seed source is a broadband-amplified spontaneous emission source with a full output power of 27.6 W. A single-stage dual-clad fiber amplifier is used, in which the maximal optical-to-optical conversion efficiency is 81.47%. A beam quality of M 2 = 1.53 is measured at an output power of 1 kW. At maximum output power, the central wavelength and full width at half maximum linewidth of the amplified light are 1082.08 nm and 6.32 nm, respectively. No conspicuous spike was observed at the stimulated Raman scattering wavelength. The corresponding power fluctuation is 2.97%, which indicates the good power stability of the broadband high-power superfluorescent fiber source (SFS) system. This kilowatt-class high-power all-fiberized SFS system which has high conversion efficiency and good power stability and is based on a compact single-stage power-scaling scheme, is an alternative and competitive solution for industrial precision processes and special stabilized pumping. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest power SFS ever reported, and the first demonstration of a high-power SFS with a kW-level output power in a compact single-stage power-scaling scheme.

A high-power all-fiber broadband superfluorescent source is fabricated by using a distributed side-coupled cladding-pumped Yb-doped fiber. It is found experimentally that besides the optical feedback, the active fiber parameters have a significant effect on the power scaling. By optimizing the fiber length, a record amplified spontaneous emission output of 186.3 W is achieved, and the slope efficiency with respect to launched pump power is 78%. The bandwidths are larger than 20 nm. Furthermore, the power scalability of the superfluorescent source is analyzed numerically. The parasitic laser oscillation can be suppressed further with a large core to cladding ratio.

The active coherent polarization beam combining (CPBC) technique has been experimentally proved to be a promising approach for the energy and power scaling of ultrashort laser pulses, despite the tremendous challenge in temporal synchronization, dispersion management and nonlinearity control. In order to develop a comprehensive theoretical model to investigate the influence of temporal–spectral effects on ultrafast fiber active CPBC systems, a generalized nonlinear Schrodinger equation carrying spectral factors is used to depict the propagation of ultrashort pulses in fiber amplifier channels and ultrashort-pulsed Gaussian beams (PGBs) carrying temporal–spatial factors are utilized to picture the propagation of ultrashort pulses in the free space. To the best of our knowledge, the influence of different temporal–spectral effects has been segregated for the first time and corresponding analytical equations have been strictly derived to link the combining efficiency with specific factors. Based on our analysis, the optical path difference (OPD) has the most detrimental impact on the combining efficiency because of the high controlling accuracy and anti-interference requirements. For instance, the OPD must be controlled in ~ ±14 μm to achieve a combining efficiency of above 95% for combining ultrashort laser pulses with a 3 dB spectral bandwidth of 13 nm centered at 1064 nm. Besides, the analytical expression also demonstrates that the impact of self-phase modulation on the combining efficiency has no dependence on spectral bandwidth and only depends on the B integral difference if neglecting the direct influence of the peak power difference. Our analysis also indicates that the group velocity dispersion has relatively small influence on the combining efficiency. These formulas can be used to diagnose the influence of temporal–spectral effects and provide useful guidelines for the design or optimization of the active CPBC system of ultrafast fiber chirped-pulse amplifiers.

The characteristics of mode-locked noise-like pulses generated from a passively mode-locked fiber oscillator are experimentally investigated. By carefully adjusting the two polarization controllers, stable mode-locked noise-like pulse emission with a high radio frequency signal/noise ratio of >55 dB is successfully achieved, ensuring the safety and possibility of high power amplification. To investigate the amplification characteristics of such pulses, one all-fiber master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) is built to boost the power and energy of such pulses. Amplified noise-like pulses with average output power of 423 W, repetition rate of 18.71 MHz, pulse energy of 22.61 μJ, pulse duration of 72.1 ps and peak power of 314 kW are obtained. Near diffraction-limited beam is also demonstrated with M2 factor measured at full power operation of ~1.2 in the X and Y directions. The polarization extinction ratio at output power of 183 W is measured to be ~13 dB. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of high-power amplification of noise-like pulses and the highest peak power ever reported in all-fiber picosecond MOPAs. The temporal self-compression process of such pulses and high peak power when amplified make it an ideal pump source for generation of high-power supercontinuum. Other potential applications, such as material processing and optical coherent tomography, could also be foreseen.

A model for an end-pumped double-pass alkali vapour laser is set up which has considered all the main physical features, including the fine-structure mixing rate that represents the three-level nature of this kind of laser, the spectral dependence of pump light absorption for broadband pumping, the longitudinal population variation and the distributed intra-cavity losses. To solve this model, we have proposed a searching algorithm for a single-pass configuration and developed a novel iterative algorithm for a double-pass case which has taken the single-pass solution as an initial value. The calculation process demonstrates a fast rate of convergence and high degree of accuracy. By this algorithm, some special cases, for example, the non-uniform longitudinal distribution of alkali atom concentration, can also be solved well. The model and the numerical approach described in this paper demonstrate a new method to simulate the CW end-pumped quasi-three- or three-level lasers. In this way, no significant assumptions or simplifications are needed in the model, and both the detailed intra-cavity information and pump power distribution can be obtained. To ensure the correctness of our model, a comparison between our model and Beach et al's model is made. The result shows that when the non-uniformity of the longitudinal population distribution is less than 20% or the pump intensity is far beyond the threshold, the assumption of longitudinal population average is valid and the two models are equivalent. When the pump intensity is near the threshold, this assumption may be invalid due to the large longitudinal population variation. If this case happens or more detailed laser information is required, we could use this model to obtain a more accurate solution.