Optical damage measurements for high peak power ytterbium doped fiber amplifiers

N-on-1 LIDT measurements were performed on ytterbium doped preforms used to make high peak power fiber amplifiers. Damage measurements were complicated by large index of refraction changes across the preforms. These difficulties were overcome by monitoring the beam profile before and after the samples and by only taking data where the transmitted beam was not significantly distorted. Single and 1000 shot data suggest slight laser conditioning of the preforms and rule out laser fatigue in the doped cores and surrounding fused silica. At 1064 nm, inside the emission spectra, there seemed to be little influence of the Yb dopant concentration on the measured LIDT.