2392 Vol. 46, No.
10 / 15 May 2021 / Optics Letters
2.3 W monolithic fiber laser operating in the
visible
Marie-Pier Lord,* Vincent Fortin, Frédéric Maes, Lauris Talbot, Martin Bernier,
AND Réal Vallée
Centre d’Optique, Photonique et Laser (COPL), Université Laval, Québec, Québec G1V 0A6, Canada
*Corresponding author: marie-pier.lord.1@ulaval.ca
Received 12 March 2021; revised 14 April 2021; accepted 16 April 2021; posted 21 April 2021 (Doc. ID 424765); published 6 May 2021
We report, to the best of our knowledge, the first monolithic
visible fiber laser pumped by a pigtailed diode. The robust
cavity design proposed is based on a highly reflective fiber
Bragg grating spliced to a double-clad praseodymium-
doped fiber. The laser signal generated at 635.5 nm is
single-mode, has a FWHM bandwidth of 0.16 nm, and
reaches a maximum cw output power of 2.3 W. This demon-
stration breaks ground for the development of reliable
high-power visible fiber lasers. © 2021 Optical Society of
America
https://doi.org/10.1364/OL.424765
Lanthanide-doped fiber lasers stand among the most compact,
rugged, and reliable high-brightness laser systems available [1].
Until recently, the development of such sources has been mostly
limited to the near- and mid-IR spectral regions, i.e., between
1 and 4 µm [2]. However, in the last few years, the advent of
gallium nitride (GaN) laser diodes and frequency doubled opti-
cally pumped semiconductor lasers (2ω-OPSLs) have provided
a key technology for the development of efficient fiber lasers
operating in the visible [3]. Renewed interest has thus emerged
for the development of such sources, as they can fulfill appli-
cations in numerous fields. On the one hand, visible lasers are
highly in demand in the biomedical field for applications such
as protein imaging [4], DNA sequencing [5], flow cytometry
[6], cosmetic microsurgery [7], and the treatment of eye diseases
such as diabetic retinopathy [8]. On the other hand, these laser
sources can be used for free-space optical communications [9]
and for the cooling of atoms in fundamental metrology [10].
Among the lanthanide ions that can be excited by blue
laser radiation, the praseodymium trivalent ion (Pr3+ ) has
attracted the most attention, as it presents a strong absorption
cross section around 442 nm and possesses several emission
bands between 470 and 720 nm [11]. In 2013, Fujimoto et al.
demonstrated watt-level multi-color visible laser emission
from a Pr3+ -doped fluoro-aluminate glass fiber pumped by
two GaN single-mode laser diodes [12]. The active fiber was
then optimized to allow slightly higher pumping levels while
maintaining single-mode emission [13,14]. This work led to
the demonstration of the current record output power of 2 W at
635 nm.
0146-9592/21/102392-04 Journal © 2021 Optical Society of America
Letter
In order to fully exploit the potential of high-power GaN
pump diodes, which can now produce a 100 W near 445 nm,
double-clad lanthanide-doped fibers were recently investigated.
A first, to the best of our knowledge, demonstration based on
such fiber geometry was recently reported, yielding an output
power of 1 W at 635 nm from a double-clad Pr3+ -doped fiber
[15]. In another very recent demonstration based on a double-
clad Pr3+ fiber, a watt-level peak power was obtained in the
quasi-continuous wave (qcw) regime, although this system was
limited to 0.46 W in the continuous-wave (cw) regime because
of thermal issues [16].
Another crucial step towards the development of monolithic,
and thus robust and reliable visible fiber lasers, is the develop-
ment of in-fiber reflective components. In 2011, Okamoto
et al. reported on an all-fiber laser cavity emitting at 521 nm
through the splicing of a Pr3+ -doped fluoride fiber to a multi-
layer dielectric end-coated silica fiber [17]. However, fiber Bragg
gratings (FBG) admittedly constitute a much more convenient
and versatile approach to spectrally selective in-fiber reflec-
tion. Accordingly, Zeller et al. demonstrated early in 2003 a
Pr3+ /Yb3+ upconversion fiber laser tunable over 8 nm around
603 nm thanks to a strained FBG inscribed in a germanosilicate
fiber [18]. The FBGs were however butt-coupled to the active
fluoride fiber, which reduced the ruggedness of the setup. Since
this early demonstration, significant improvements were made
to develop hybrid splices between fluoride and silicate glass
fibers [19,20]. This is crucial for visible fiber lasers, as opposed to
their mid-IR counterparts, since FBGs can be first inscribed in
silicate glass fibers and then simply spliced to the active fluoride
glass fibers. It is important to emphasize that all cw visible fiber
lasers reported so far had their pump signals injected through
the use of free-space components and were thus not monolithic.
Actually, quasi-monolithic visible fiber lasers [i.e., involving
fiber-optic (FC) connectors] have been demonstrated in the
past, but only for operation in the pulsed regime at low output
powers [21,22].
In this Letter, we report on a monolithic Pr3+ -doped fiber
laser using a second-order FBG. The laser generates 2.3 W of
power at 635.5 nm, the highest cw output power from a visible
fiber laser reported to date. The laser signal is single-mode and
has a FWHM bandwidth of less than 0.2 nm. Simulations show
 Letter
Fig. 1. Experimental setup of the laser cavity. MM, multimode;
HR-FBG, highly reflective fiber Bragg grating (R > 99 %); S1–S3,
fusion splice; RCPS, residual cladding pump stripper.
that further power scaling to tens of watts is within reach based
on such rugged laser cavity design.
The schematic of the all-fiber laser is depicted in Fig. 1.
The cavity is made out of a 4-m-long Pr3+ -doped zirconium
fluoride (ZrF4 ) fiber provided by Le Verre Fluoré (6000 ppm,
5.5/115 ∗ 125/180 µm, NAcore = 0.08, NAclad ∼ 0.57,
λcutoff = 0.57 µm). A highly reflective FBG (HR-FBG) with
R > 99% is written in a home-built depressed-cladding pure
silica core fiber having a matching geometry (5/125 µm,
NAcore = 0.08), which is directly spliced to the active
Pr3+ : ZrF4 fiber (cf. Fig. 2). The FBG was written by fem-
tosecond inscription at 400 nm using the phase-mask technique
[23]. The phase-mask had a central period of 871.9 nm and
a chirp rate of 1.3 nm/cm, providing a second-order Bragg
reflection at 635.5 nm. The FBG was thermally annealed at
320◦ C for 5 min to eliminate photoinduced absorption losses
in the core. The fiber hosting the FBG had a pure silica core
to avoid the creation of germanium-related defects during the
FBG inscription [24]. On the distal end of the laser cavity,
the Pr3+ : ZrF4 fiber was cleaved at a right angle to provide
nearly 4% Fresnel reflection at the signal wavelength. A resid-
ual cladding pump stripper (RCPS), made out of UV-cured
high-index polymer, was applied on 5 cm of uncoated fiber as
a mean to eliminate any residual pump power propagating in
the cladding. At the front end, a 444 nm highly multimode
GaN diode (BWT K450FA5FG-20.00 W) delivers the pump
signal through a standard multimode 105/125 µm (0.22 NA)
silica fiber pigtail. The propagation losses of the pump signal
through the active double-clad fiber were found to be notably
high (≈1.5 dB/m), whereas the losses of the core are estimated
to be around 0.2 dB/m at the signal wavelength. As for the silica
fiber hosting the FBG, it has low cladding losses (≈0.02 dB/m)
at the pump wavelength but significantly higher core propaga-
tion losses (≈3 dB/m) due to sensitive curvature losses resulting
from an unoptimized depressed-cladding design. Such losses
significantly reduce the effective reflectivity of the HR-FBG,
although the segment of this fiber inside the cavity was kept as
short as possible. Table 1 summarizes the different causes of loss
in the cavity.
The fusion splice between the fluoride and silica fibers,
denoted as S3 in Fig. 1, is a critical component of the all-fiber
design presented. It was performed with a fiber splicer (Vytran
GPX-3000), using the technique described in [19,20]. The
splice’s transmission was actively monitored with a single-mode
637 nm laser diode and was estimated at 90%. To avoid destabi-
lizing the diode with the HR-FBG, the fusion splice was done on
a separate segment, which justifies the additional splice denoted
as S2 in Fig. 1. A picture of splice S3, taken with the imaging
Vol. 46, No. 10 / 15 May 2021 / Optics Letters 2393
Fig. 2. Picture of the fusion splice between the fluoride and the silica
fiber, denoted as S3 in Fig. 1.
Table 1. Summary of the Losses in the Laser Cavity
Origin Core Loss Clad Loss
Splice S1 N/A 2.5%
Splice S2 10% 2.5%
Splice S3 10% 5%
SiO2 5/125/180 µm 3 dB/m 0.02 dB/m
Pr3+ : ZrF4 0.2 dB/m 1.5 dB/m
Fig. 3. Emission properties of the active fiber. (a) Simplified energy
diagram of Pr3+ . (b) Output spectrum collected from 470 to 800 nm at
the laser threshold.
system of the splicer platform, is presented in Fig. 2. All of the
stripped fiber sections (i.e., S1–S3 splices and HR-FBG) were
recoated with a UV-cured low-index polymer and passively
cooled on a copper V-groove. The active fiber was also passively
cooled on an aluminum plate.
Figure 3(a) presents the energy levels of the Pr3+ ions in
fluoride glass alongside the main visible transitions. Due to
its high emission cross section around 635 nm, the transition
3
P0 → 3 F2 is the most efficient in the visible [25]. Figure 3(b)
shows the emission spectrum of the Pr3+ : ZrF4 laser cavity.
The data was collected with an optical spectrum analyzer (OSA)
(Yokogawa AQ6373B) with a resolution of 0.2 nm. From laser
threshold to maximum output power, the amplitude of the
amplified spontaneous emission remains more than 35 dB
below the amplitude of the laser signal at 635.5 nm.
The transmission spectra of the HR-FBG alongside the laser
emission spectrum at maximum output power is presented
in Fig. 4(a). The FWHM bandwidth of the laser spectrum is
0.16 nm. From the laser threshold to the maximum output,
the central wavelength of the laser signal shifts by less than
0.02 nm, which demonstrates the high stability provided by the
HR-FBG.
Figure 4(b) presents the laser output power with respect to
the injected pump power obtained experimentally alongside the
results obtained from numerical simulations. A pump-limited
 2394 Vol. 46, No. 10 / 15 May 2021 / Optics Letters
Fig. 4. (a) Transmission spectra of the HR-FBG and normalized
laser spectrum at maximum output power. The resolution of the OSA
is 0.02 nm. (b) Laser output power at 635.5 nm with respect to the
injected pump power around 444 nm.
Fig. 5. Relation between pump power, pump wavelength, and
absorption of Pr3+ ions. (a) Overlap between the normalized absorp-
tion spectrum of Pr3+ ions and the normalized spectrum of the pump
at 1 and 18 W. The resolution of the OSA is 1 nm. (b) Pump wave-
length and absorption coefficient of Pr3+ ions as a function of the
launched pump power.
maximum of 2.3 W is obtained for a launched pump power
of 18.3 W. At low power, the corresponding slope efficiency
is 14% with respect to the launched pump power, whereas
the laser threshold is close to 0.5 W. Very good agreement was
actually found between numerical and experimental results
based on a spectroscopic data set reported by Olivier et al. [25].
Considering the coefficients of loss and absorption in the laser
cavity [see Fig. 5(b) for the absorption coefficient], the laser
efficiency with respect to the absorbed pump power is 41%.
The roll-over behavior of the laser output power observed in
Fig. 4(b) is related to the red shift of the pump diode’s emission
wavelength with increasing power (or driving current). Indeed,
the absorption cross section of Pr3+ ions, reaching its maximal
value around 442 nm, has a narrow bandwidth (≈10 nm)
that makes the excitation wavelength critical for blue-pumped
Pr3+ -doped fiber lasers [11,15]. Figure 5(a) illustrates this
phenomenon by showing the overlap between the absorption
spectrum of Pr3+ ions and the pump emission spectrum at
two powers of operation. It is worth mentioning that in this
work, the problem of the red shift is exacerbated by the high
pump losses in the active fiber, as total absorption of the pump
power cannot be reached, regardless of the cavity length. In
order to quantify the effect of the pump’s red shift, the emission
spectrum of the pump diode was measured as a function of the
driving current and, by extension, as a function of the injected
Letter
Fig. 6. Stability curve of the laser operating at 2.0 W.
pump power in the cavity. Accordingly, we define an effective
pumping wavelength, λeff , in Eq. (1) as the normalized spectral
first moment of the overlap integral between the emission spec-
trum of the pump diode, P (λ), and the absorption cross section
of the Pr3+ ions, σabs (λ):
λP (λ)σabs (λ)dλ
R
λeff = R . (1)
P (λ)σabs (λ)dλ
This effective pumping wavelength is plotted in Fig. 5(b)
as a function of the injected pump power. Note that this effec-
tive wavelength closely follows the actual peak wavelength of
the diode and is only shifted by 0.15 nm. The corresponding
absorption coefficient, shown alongside the pump wavelength
in Fig. 5(b), was calculated from the relation α = NPr σabs 0,
where NPr = 1.16 × 1020 cm−3 is the Pr3+ doping density in
the fiber core, σabs is the absorption cross section at the effective
pump wavelength, and 0 is the power filling factor, given by the
ratio between the areas of the core and the cladding of the active
fiber for a cladding pumping scheme. At low pump power, 34%
of the launched pump power is absorbed by Pr3+ ions, and this
fraction lowers to 27% at maximum pump power. This decrease
of the absorption coefficient was taken into account in modeling
our fiber laser and actually appears to be responsible for the
roll-over of the experimental data shown on Fig. 4(b).
Figure 6 presents the stability curve of the laser operating
at 2.0 W for over 100 min. The RMS variation is below 2%,
demonstrating the long-term stability of the laser cavity.
Although a record stable cw output power was obtained,
our fiber laser is far from optimized due to the high losses
summarized in Table 1. First, the design of the home-made
depressed-cladding pure silica core fiber could be improved. In
fact, low-loss single-mode pure silica fibers are already commer-
cially available, but only in a standard single-cladding geometry.
Alternatively, the HR-FBG could be inscribed directly in
the fluoride gain fiber [26], which would avoid the use of the
depressed-cladding fiber and the corresponding splices (S2
and S3). Another major limitation of our setup arises from
the abnormal propagation losses of the 444 nm pump signal
through the cladding of the Pr3+ : ZrF4 fiber. We believe that
the main loss mechanism in the fiber originates from scattering
resulting from inhomogeneities either within the glass itself or at
the cladding interfaces. Clearly, any improvements in the fiber
fabrication process aimed at reducing the pump propagation
losses would result in a significant increase in laser efficiency.
Accordingly, we have performed numerical simulations to
illustrate the performances expected from an optimized design.
Figure 7 presents the simulated laser output power at
635.5 nm as a function of the pump propagation losses. Three
 Letter
Fig. 7. Simulation of the laser output power with respect to the
pump losses in the cladding of the active fiber, for different fiber
lengths and different values of effective reflectivity for the HR-FBG.
The launched pump power is 18.3 W.
different case scenarios are presented. The first one presents the
results obtained using the same parameters as for the simula-
tion presented in Fig. 4(b), i.e., a cavity length of 4 m and an
effective reflectivity of 25% for the HR-FBG. The second one
presents the expected results for the same cavity length, but with
an effective reflectivity of 99% for the HR-FBG. The last one
also considers a maximal reflection for the HR-FBG, but uses
a cavity length of 10 m. This value was found to be the optimal
length in the case of a cavity without any pump losses in the fiber
cladding. For the simulation, the injected pump power and the
effective pumping wavelength were set to 18.3 W and 444.8 nm,
respectively.
The simulation results presented in Fig. 7 highlight the
potential of our laser configuration for further power scaling.
We observe that simply increasing the HR-FBG’s effective
reflectivity to 99% (while maintaining other cavity parameters)
would result in a laser output power of 3.0 W at 635.5 nm.
Ideally, this would be achieved by writing the HR-FBG directly
through the active fiber, as this would also improve the rugged-
ness of the setup by removing the need of intracavity splices. The
FBG’s effective reflectivity could also be increased by reducing
the core propagation losses of the host silica fiber. These results
also show that a significant improvement in performance is
expected by using a Pr3+ : ZrF4 fiber with reduced cladding
propagation losses, which will require the optimization of the
fiber fabrication process by the manufacturer. With cladding
pump losses of 0.02 dB/m, similar to those of the silica fiber
in our setup, the maximum output power would reach nearly
7 W for the same pumping conditions, which would mean a
three-fold increase of the laser efficiency as a function of the
launched pump power.
In conclusion, we have demonstrated the first, to the best of
our knowledge, entirely monolithic visible fiber laser. The laser
signal generated is single-mode, has a narrow FWHM band-
width of 0.16 nm, and reaches a maximum output power of
2.3 W, the highest power ever generated from a visible fiber laser.
The laser setup is compatible with high-power multimode GaN
pump sources and takes advantage of a second-order FBG writ-
ten in a silica fiber. Simulations show that further optimization
of the laser cavity could result in an output power approaching
the 10 W level.
Vol. 46, No. 10 / 15 May 2021 / Optics Letters 2395
Funding. Fonds de Recherche du Québec–Nature et Technologies
(114616, CO25665); Canada Foundation for Innovation (5180); Natural
Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (CG112389,
IRCPJ469414-13).
Disclosures. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
Data Availability. Data underlying the results presented in this paper are
not publicly available at this time but may be obtained from the authors upon
reasonable request.
REFERENCES
1. M. N. Zervas, Int. J. Mod. Phys. B 28, 1442009 (2014).
2. S. D. Jackson, Nat. Photonics 6, 423 (2012).
3. C. Kränkel, D.-T. Marzahl, F. Moglia, G. Huber, and P. W. Metz, Laser
Photon. Rev. 10, 548 (2016).
4. B. Huang, M. Bates, and X. Zhuang, Annu. Rev. Biochem. 78, 993
(2009).
5. H. Swerdlow, J. Z. Zhang, D. Y. Chen, H. R. Harke, R. Grey, S. Wu,
N. J. Dovichi, and C. Fuller, Anal. Chem. 63, 2835 (1991).
6. W. G. Telford, T. Hawley, F. Subach, V. Verkhusha, and R. G. Hawley,
Methods 57, 318 (2012).
7. R. J. Lanzafame, R. R. Blanche, A. B. Bodian, R. P. Chiacchierini, A.
Fernandez-Obregon, and E. R. Kazmirek, Laser Surgery Med. 45, 487
(2013).
8. E. Burumcek, A. Mudun, S. Karacorlu, and M. O. Arslan,
Ophthalmology 104, 616 (1997).
9. W.-Y. Lin, C.-Y. Chen, H.-H. Lu, C.-H. Chang, Y.-P. Lin, H.-C. Lin, and
H.-W. Wu, Opt. Express 20, 9919 (2012).
10. M. Hentschel, R. Kienberger, C. Spielmann, G. A. Reider, N.
Milosevic, T. Brabec, P. Corkum, U. Heinzmann, M. Drescher, and
F. Krausz, Nature 414, 509 (2001).
11. J. Adam and W. Sibley, J. Non-Cryst. Solids 76, 267 (1985).
12. Y. Fujitomo, M. Murakami, J. Nakanishi, T. Yamada, O. Ishii, and
M. Yamazaki, in Advanced Solid State Lasers (Optical Society of
America, 2013), paper AM2A–2.
13. S. Kajikawa, T. Terao, M. Yoshida, S. Motokoshi, O. Ishii, M.
Yamazaki, and Y. Fujimoto, Electron. Lett. 52, 861 (2016).
14. Y. Fujimoto, M. Nakahara, P. Binun, S. Motokoshi, O. Ishii, M.
Watanabe, M. Yamazaki, T. Shinozaki, T. Sato, and Y. Yanomori,
in The European Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (Optical
Society of America, 2019), paper cj_p_34.
15. M.-P. Lord, F. Maes, V. Fortin, M. Bernier, and R. Vallée, in Advanced
Solid State Lasers (Optical Society of America, 2020), paper ATh5A–
6.
16. E. Kifle, F. Starecki, P. Loiko, S. Cozic, F. Joulain, T. Berthelot, T.
Georges, D. Stojcevski, D. Deubel, and P. Camy, Opt. Lett. 46, 74
(2020).
17. H. Okamoto, K. Kasuga, and Y. Kubota, Opt. Lett. 36, 1470 (2011).
18. M. Zeller, H. Limberger, and T. Lasser, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett. 15,
194 (2003).
19. T. Huang, Q. He, X. She, X. Shu, and C. Liu, Opt. Eng. 55, 106119
(2016).
20. Y. O. Aydin, F. Maes, V. Fortin, S. T. Bah, R. Vallée, and M. Bernier,
Opt. Express 27, 20659 (2019).
21. W. Li, T. Du, J. Lan, C. Guo, Y. Cheng, H. Xu, C. Zhu, F. Wang, Z. Luo,
and Z. Cai, Opt. Lett. 42, 671 (2017).
22. W. Li, J. Wu, Z. Cai, X. Guan, and H. Xu, J. Lightwave Technol. 37,
5727 (2019).
23. M. Bernier, R. Vallée, B. Morasse, C. Desrosiers, A. Saliminia, and Y.
Sheng, Opt. Express 17, 18887 (2009).
24. E. Anoikin, V. Mashinsky, V. Neustruev, and Y. Sidorin, J. Non-Cryst.
Solids 179, 243 (1994).
25. M. Olivier, J.-L. Doualan, V. Nazabal, P. Camy, and J.-L. Adam, J. Opt.
Soc. Am. B 30, 2032 (2013).
26. M. Bernier, D. Faucher, R. Vallée, A. Saliminia, G. Androz, Y. Sheng,
and S. Chin, Opt. Lett. 32, 454 (2007).