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We propose and demonstrate a new method of direct writing large-area fiber Bragg grating by femtosecond laser through the coating. By adding an adjustable diaphragm before the focusing objective, we can precisely control the length of the refractive index modulation line along the femtosecond laser incident direction up to 29.1 µm. In combination with femtosecond laser scanning fabrication technology, a uniform refractive index modulation plane can be inscribed in the fiber in a single scanning. Based on the plane-by-plane inscription method, we have fabricated a high-quality high-reflectivity fiber Bragg grating and a chirped fiber Bragg grating on 20/400 double-clad fiber core. The reflectivity of both gratings is greater than 99%, and the insertion loss is as low as 0.165 dB and 0.162 dB, respectively. The thermal slope of chirped fiber Bragg grating without any refrigeration is 0.088 °C/W and there is no obvious temperature increase when using the water cooling. Therefore, the fabrication method of large-area fiber Bragg grating based on diaphragm shaping can efficiently fabricate high-quality fiber Bragg grating in the large core diameter fiber, which has an important application prospect in high-power all-fiber oscillators, especially all-fiber oscillators in special wavebands.

We demonstrate an all-fiber high-power narrow-linewidth fiber laser based on a homemade tapered Yb-doped fiber (T-YDF). The laser performance is investigated and systematically compared with different seed powers and pump manners. The experimental results reveal that the injected seed power requires a trade-off designed to take into account the impact of spectral broadening, nonlinear effects, and transverse mode instability (TMI). Compared with the co-pump manner, the counter-pump manner performs well in inhibiting nonlinearities, spectral broadening, and improving the TMI threshold. Under the counter-pump manner, this narrow-linewidth T-YDF amplifier realized a 2.09 kW output power with a 3 dB spectral linewidth of ∼0.34 nm, a beam quality of M 2 ∼1.28 and a high Raman suppression ratio over 53.5 dB, the highest reported power for such a T-YDF-based narrow-linewidth single-mode laser, to the best of our knowledge. This work provides a promising pathway towards implementing monolithic high-power narrow-linewidth single-mode fiber lasers.

Thermal blooming effect is one of the significant factors affecting the propagation performance of high-power ytterbium-doped fiber lasers (YDFLs) in the atmosphere. In this paper, two 20 kW YDFL systems with typical wavelengths (1070 nm and 1080 nm) are fabricated for propagation comparison experiments, which are used to investigate the thermal blooming effect induced by high-power YDFL propagation through the atmosphere. Under approximately the same laser system parameters (except wavelength) and atmospheric environment, the 1070 nm laser has better propagation characteristics than the 1080 nm laser. Due to the combined effect between the different central wavelengths of the two fiber lasers and the spectral broadening caused by output power scaling, the thermal blooming caused by the different absorptivity of water vapor molecules to the two fiber lasers is the main factor for the variation of the propagation properties. Through theoretical analysis and numerical calculation of factors affecting the thermal blooming effect, and considering the industrial manufacturing difficulty of YDFLs, a reasonable selection of fiber laser parameters can effectively improve atmospheric propagation performance and reduce manufacturing costs.

We propose a polarimetric imaging processing method based on feature fusion and apply it to the task of target detection. Four images with distinct polarization orientations were used as one parallel input, and they were fused into a single feature map with richer feature information. We designed a learning feature fusion method using convolutional neural networks (CNNs). The fusion strategy was derived from training. Meanwhile, we generated a dataset involving one original image, four polarization orientation images, ground truth masks, and bounding boxes. The effectiveness of our method was compared to that of conventional deep learning methods. Experimental results revealed that our method gets a 0.80 mean average precision (mAP) and a 0.09 miss rate (MR), which are both better than the conventional deep learning method.

We described a wavelength locked and spectral narrowed high-power diode laser with a Faraday anomalous dispersion optical filter (FADOF). By an external cavity with a 85 Rb FADOF, the central wavelength of the diode laser was precisely locked to the Rb resonance D 2 line. The bandwidth was narrowed from the free-running 4 nm to 0.002 nm (1.2 GHz, FWHM). At 4.9 A maximal driven current, the laser produced a continuous wave (CW) output of 18 W with an external cavity efficiency of 80%, either the current or the temperature had no impact on the central wavelength of the diode laser. The Rb cell works well without any damage under a long-time running. This ultra-stable and extreme-narrowed high power diode laser would find many applications in alkali lasers pumping, metastable rare gas laser pumping, spin-exchange optical pumping, and quantum optics.

Modal decomposition (MD) plays an increasingly important role in characterizing fiber beams. Several promising MD techniques have been proposed in literature, all of which are based on a common hypothesis that the modal field is coherently superposed by transverse modes. However, the partially coherent conditions have to be expected in general. In order to take account of this ordinary case, a novel MD scheme employing the Wigner distribution function (WDF) is introduced, which allows the decomposition of fiber beams without any restrictions regarding their degree of coherence. The four-dimensional (4D) WDF (two spatial and two spatial frequency dimensions) of the 2D fiber beam is reconstructed using the coded aperture technique. Based on the measured WDF and orthogonal property of transverse modes, the modal coefficients as well as the mutual modal degree of coherence will be determined unambiguously. The validity and reliability of the proposed approach are illustrated with numerical examples.

We propose and demonstrate a method for the adaptive phase correction of dynamic multimode fiber beams. The phase of incident beam is reconstructed in real-time based on the complete modal information, which obtained by using the modal decomposition of correlation filter method. For the proof of principle, both of the modal decomposition and the phase correction are implemented using the same computer-generated hologram, which was encoded into a phase-only spatial light modulator. We demonstrate the phase correction of dynamic multimode beam at a rate of 5 Hz and achieve a 1.73-fold improvement on the average power-in-the-bucket. The experimental results indicate the feasibility of the real-time phase correction for the large mode area fiber laser by adaptive optics.

Modal decomposition (MD) has become an indispensable diagnostic tool for optical fibers. A novel MD method using the fractional Fourier system is developed in this paper. Firstly, the existing phase retrieval (PR) algorithm based on the the fractional Fourier transform (FrFT) power spectra is extended to account for the effect of optical vortex. The extended capability can then be employed to reconstruct the phase of modal field to high fidelity in a non-iterative and non-interferometric manner. Combining the reconstructed phase with the measured near-field (NF) intensity, the modal field could be obtained and based upon which the complete MD (involving modal weights and phases) is performed. The validity and reliability of the method are demonstrated through several numerical examples including the noisy signals with different signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) levels.

In the power scaling of monolithic fiber lasers, the fiber nonlinear effects and transverse mode instability are main limitations. The tapered gain fiber has a longitudinally varying mode area, which has the advantage of mitigating fiber nonlinear effects. However, the transverse mode instability (TMI) was seldom reported in the tapered fiber lasers at high average power levels. In this work, we have constructed a monolithic tapered ytterbium-doped fiber laser oscillator and investigated the laser oscillator performance with respective 976 nm and 915 nm pump, especially on the aspects of the TMI. The double cladding tapered ytterbium-doped fiber has a narrow end of ~20/400 μm and a wide end of ~30/600 μm. Fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) are respectively inscribed on double cladding fibers with core/inner cladding diameter of 20/400 μm and 30/400 μm to match with the narrow and wide end of the tapered ytterbium-doped fiber. When 915 nm pump is employed, the TMI occurs at the output power of ~1350 W. The output power is further scaled to a maximum of 1720 W. The M 2 factor of the output laser is ~2.1 and the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the signal laser is ~3.6 nm. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest average power for the tapered ytterbium-doped fiber lasers.

Impact of mode instability on dynamic characteristics of stimulated Raman scattering in high power fiber amplifiers has been studied for the first time, which reveals another characterization of mode instability from the aspect of optical spectrum. It shows that, after the onset of mode instability, the measured light spectrums, especially the Raman light spectrums, are different from those without mode instability, which become burr-like. As mode instability evolves into different stages, the intensity of stimulated Raman scattering effects as laser power increasing also behaves differently. During the transition region, the stimulated Raman scattering effect becomes stronger as the lasing power increases until the mode instability evolves into chaotic regions, where the stimulated Raman scattering effect weakens. The effect of stimulated Raman scattering on mode instability has also been studied. Due to that the stimulated Raman scattering effect is weak and that the fraction of Raman light is only a few percent, the stimulated-Raman-scattering-induced mode instability has not been observed in the experiment, and the observed mode instability is induced by ytterbium ion gain of signal laser. It also revealed that the stimulated Raman scattering has negligible influence on the mode instability induced by ytterbium ion gain.

Random distributed feedback Raman fiber laser is a new kind of light source that can be applied to generate a high-power laser. In this Letter, we report on a high-power, high-spectral-purity random Raman fiber laser based on tapered fiber, in which the four-wave mixing (FWM) effect has been sufficiently suppressed. By choosing an appropriate tapered fiber length, we achieve a maximum random laser output of 491 W, and the spectral purity can reach to as high as 94%. We carefully compare the influence of different tapered fiber lengths and splicing patterns on the FWM effect by the cutting-back method and lateral-offset splicing. The results show that the transverse modes dispersion is responsible for the appearance of FWM by compensating the phase mismatch. It is believed that a kilowatt-level random laser can be obtained by further optimizing the parameters of tapered fiber.

We demonstrate here the inscription of chirped and tilted fiber Bragg gratings (CTFBGs), to the best of our knowledge, for the first time in hydrogen-loaded large-mode-area (LMA) double-cladding fibers using UV pulses and linearly chirped phase masks. High reflectivity wideband adjustable band-rejection filters are achieved in fibers like LMA-GDF-10/130-M and PS-GDF-20/400-M, with a wavelength coverage of more than 10 nm and suppression ratio around 20 dB. The spectrum and temperature properties are investigated. Experimental results indicate that CTFBGs could be used in double-cladding fiber systems with a smoothly varying attenuation spectrum and a low insertion loss, which is significant for further power scaling in a high-power fiber system.

We demonstrate an all-fiber 7 × 1 signal combiner with an output core diameter of 50 μm for high power incoherent beam combining of seven self-made Yb-doped single-mode fiber lasers around a wavelength of 1080 nm and output power of 2 kW. 14.1 kW combined output power is achieved with a total transmission efficiency of higher than 98.5% and a beam quality of M 2 = 5.37, which is close to the theoretical results based on finite-difference beam propagation technique. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest output power ever reported for all-fiber structure beam combining generation, which indicates the feasibility and potential of >10 kW high brightness incoherent beam combining based on an all-fiber signal combiner.

We report a high power transverse-mode-switchable fiber laser in a master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) configuration. The output modes of a few-mode fiber amplifier can be actively controlled by the input polarization state of the fundamental mode seed laser using SPGD algorithm. A fast, stable and safety mode switching between LP01 and LP11 modes is achieved in the amplifier at output power of 500 W level.

We report on the demonstration of a high power, high beam quality random fiber laser. It is a half-open cavity based on 130-m-long large mode area step-index fiber with a core diameter of 20 μm and a numerical aperture of 0.08. The random laser cavity, whose central wavelength is 1120 nm, is pumped by a 1070 nm Yb-doped fiber oscillator. The maximum output power is 418 W with respect to the injected pump power of 588 W, corresponding to the optical-to-optical efficiency of 71%. The output power, spectral, and temporal characteristics are carefully presented and discussed, showing that such a cavity can export high power random laser stably and effectively. The far field beam quality is also measured, and the profile is nearly a Gaussian shape. This work provides an impactful method to advance the output power of random fiber lasers.

Nanoparticles are one of the attractive building blocks for nanotechnology and offer new possibilities for novel lasers. The rare earth doped nanoparticle gas laser possesses the great potential in high energy laser (HEL) operation because it inherently combines the advantages of commercial broadband diode pumping and gas flow thermal management. By taking Yb 3+ doped nanoparticle gas laser as the main object, a modified model, which considers some main peculiar characteristics of nanoparticles, is set up and analyzed. The model includes special considerations of the scattering influence of nanoparticles, and the modifications of Yb 3+ fluorescence lifetime as well as the cross sections, which distinguishes it from the traditional lasers. Some main influencing factors are simulated and discussed, including the Yb 3+ concentration, gain length and the output coupler etc., and the energy conversion channels of absorbed pump power are analyzed. The results predict a slope efficiency of greater than 60% at reasonable conditions. The modeling provides a new horizon for further study of the scientists and engineers in the field of HEL.

Although the diode pumped alkali laser (DPAL) works in a three-level scheme, higher energy-state excitation and ionization processes exist during operation, which may lead to deleterious effects on laser performance. In this paper, we report the ionization degree measurement in the gain medium of an operational hydrocarbon-free Rb DPAL by using the optogalvanic method. The results show that, at the pulsed mode with a duration of ~1 ms, a maximal ionization degree of ~0.06% is obtained at a pump power of 140 W. While in the CW mode, the plasma reaches an ionization degree as high as ~2% at a pump power of 110 W, which is mainly due to the enough time for sufficient plasma development. A comparison with our previous work [Opt. Lett.39, 6501 (2014)] as well as modeling results is made and discussed. The influences of different population transfer channels on laser performance are simulated and analyzed. The results show that, for a typical hydrocarbon-free Rb laser (pump intensity of 15 kW/cm 2 , helium pressure of 10 atm and cell temperature of 438 K), all the high-energy excitation effects give an overall negative influence on laser efficiency of ~3.78%, while the top two influencing channels are the photoionization (~1.8%) and the energy pooling (~1.53%). The work in this paper experimentally reveals the influence of the macroscopic ionization evolution process on an operational DPAL for the first time, which would be helpful for a more comprehensive understanding of the physics in DPALs.