915 nm laser bar-based high-performance sources for fiber laser pumping

Fiber lasers have made significant progress in terms of power output, beam quality and operational robustness over the past few years. Key to this progress has been advances in two technologies - fiber technology and 9xx nm diode laser pump technology based on single emitters. We present the operational characteristics of our new high brightness 9xx nm fiber laser pump sources based on diode laser bars and diode laser bar arrays and discuss the design trade offs involved for realization of devices focused on this application. These trade offs include achieving the lowest slow axis divergence while maintaining high wall plug efficiency and minimizing facet power density to maximize reliability.