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Mitigating Transverse Mode Instability in All-Fiber Laser Oscillator and Scaling Power Up To 2.5 KW Employing Bidirectional-Pump Scheme
Mitigating Transverse Mode Instability in All-Fiber Laser Oscillator and Scaling Power Up To 2.5 KW Employing Bidirectional-Pump Scheme
Abstract: Transverse mode instability (TMI) is one of the main limiting factors in kW-level
fiber lasers. Unlike fiber amplifiers, TMI in fiber laser oscillators attracts less attention from
researchers. In this work, we construct an all-fiber ytterbium-doped laser oscillator and
investigate the performance in co-pumping and bidirectional-pumping configurations,
respectively. In the co-pumping scheme, TMI occurs at ~1.6kW and restricts further output
power scaling. Different from the characteristic of dynamic TMI in fiber amplifiers, quasi-
static TMI is observed in the laser oscillator. Details of the temporal characteristic around the
TMI threshold are provided. In the bidirectional-pumping scheme, experimental results
validate that the TMI is mitigated notably by employing bidirectional-pumping instead of co-
pumping. The output laser power is further scaled to 2.5kW with a slope efficiency of 74.5%
and good beam quality (M2~1.3). At the maximum power, the FWHM bandwidth of optical
spectra is 5.2nm, and the Raman stokes light is ~20dB below the signal.
© 2016 Optical Society of America
OCIS codes: (140.3510) Lasers, fiber; (060.2320) Fiber optics amplifiers and oscillators; (140.3480) Lasers, diode-
pumped.
#278596 http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OE.24.027828
Journal © 2016 Received 11 Oct 2016; revised 17 Nov 2016; accepted 17 Nov 2016; published 21 Nov 2016
Vol. 24, No. 24 | 28 Nov 2016 | OPTICS EXPRESS 27829
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Vol. 24, No. 24 | 28 Nov 2016 | OPTICS EXPRESS 27830
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1. Introduction
Fiber lasers are widely used in many applications for the advantages of high conversion
efficiency, good beam quality, compact structure and low maintenance operation. In the last
decades, the output powers of monolithic fiber lasers have increased remarkably [1–11]. The
record power of fiber lasers have reached over 100kW, which is realized by combining tens
of kW-level single-mode fiber lasers into a multimode output. Further power scaling is
promising by increasing the single-mode laser power and the number of beam combination.
However, the power scaling of the single-mode fiber lasers is limited by the traditional fiber
nonlinear effects and the newly observed transverse mode instability (TMI). Among fiber
nonlinear effects, the stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) is the main limiting factor for
continuous-wave broadband fiber lasers. Through the past years, large mode area (LMA)
fibers are designed and employed to effectively mitigate the fiber nonlinear effects in high
power operation. However, recent studies report that the transverse mode instability is
observed and becomes a major limitation of laser power scaling in the LMA fibers. TMI
refers to the fluctuations of normally stable high-quality beams emitted by high-power fiber
lasers observed above a sharp average power threshold [12–20]. Different from the nonlinear
effects, the detriment of TMI is that it degrades the laser beam quality and restricts the
maximum average power of the fiber laser. Despite the relative short period since the
observation, the TMI arouses the interest of researchers around the world and much progress
has been made in understanding its physical origin.
The occurrence of TMI was observed in both the structures of fiber oscillators and
amplifiers. To date, most studies and research of the TMI are focused on the fiber amplifiers
[17–33], while the TMI in fiber laser oscillators are rarely reported [34,35]. For the fiber
amplifiers, several theoretical models have been built to understand the physical origin of
TMI and find techniques to mitigate the effect [13,15,16,28]. While for the fiber laser
oscillators, only a simplified model [35,36] was put forward to analyze the threshold. Despite
with the similar physical origin of TMI, the fiber laser oscillators have to handle with the
bidirectional propagation of the signals, which makes the corresponding theoretical model
more complicated. Recently, a coupled-mode model was generalized to simulate double-pass
amplifiers [37]. It predicts a static thermo-optic instability in the double-pass fiber amplifiers,
which is much different from the TMI in single-pass amplifier in origin and property. This
model may help the researchers on the study of TMI in fiber laser oscillator as a reference.
The experimental reports and descriptions of the TMI in fiber laser oscillators are rare in
the past years. In 2014, Hejaz et al. reported the techniques to mitigate TMI in an all-fiber
laser oscillator by shifting pumping wavelength and increasing high-order modal loss [34].
The TMI threshold was characterized by the decline of the laser efficiency and the decrease
of output power, but no detailed characteristic of the output laser around the TMI threshold
was described. Several kW-level all-fiber laser oscillators were reported in the last years
[2,3,5,11]. For the single-end pumped all-fiber laser oscillators, output power of 1.2kW and
1.5kW were achieved in 2012 and 2014, respectively [2,3]. For the bidirectional-pumped all-
fiber laser oscillator, 2kW output power with near-diffractive limited beam quality was
reported [5]. In the spatial configuration, single-mode fiber laser oscillator has reached 3kW
by employing bulky optics [9]. The output powers of the fiber laser oscillators have exceeded
the currently reported TMI threshold range of ~100W to several kW, but the experimental
studies on the TMI in fiber laser oscillator are rarely reported.
In this manuscript, we report an experimental study of the TMI in an all-fiber laser
oscillator with a maximum scaling power of 2.5kW. We constructed a bidirectional-pumped
Vol. 24, No. 24 | 28 Nov 2016 | OPTICS EXPRESS 27831
Fig. 1. Experimental setup of the all-fiber laser oscillator pumped by 976nm LDs (CLS:
cladding light stripper, CO: collimator, HR: high reflector, PD: photodetector, OSA: optical
spectrum analyzer).
Vol. 24, No. 24 | 28 Nov 2016 | OPTICS EXPRESS 27832
Fig. 2. (a) output laser power and optical efficiency dependence on the co-pumping power (b)
optical spectra of the output laser at ~1.36kW and ~1.61kW.
The output power decrease, we believe, is attributed to the occurrence of TMI in the fiber
oscillator. To verify the onset of the TMI, the temporal characteristics of the output laser at
different power levels are recorded using a photodectector with a bandwidth of 150MHz. To
quantify the stability of the output laser, the standard deviation normalized to the mean value
of the time domain signals are calculated [24,30,38], as shown in Fig. 3(a). When the laser
output power reaches the roll-over point, the standard deviation values increase distinctly,
which indicates a fluctuation in the time domain signals. To give more details and reveal the
evolution, the time domain signals at the operation of ~1.36kW, ~1.61kW and ~1.56kW are
depicted in Fig. 3(b), and the corresponding Fourier spectra obtained by performing Fourier
transformation on the time domain signals are shown in Fig. 3(c). To avoid any
misunderstanding caused by the output power decrease, the recorded output power levels are
denoted as P1(~1.36kW), P2(~1.61kW) and P3(~1.56kW) respectively in Fig. 3(a). When the
laser operates at P1 and P2, the time domain signals remain stable. However, distinct
fluctuation is observed in the time trace, when the laser operates at P3. In the Fourier spectra,
the frequency components of the fluctuation are revealed. The first notable frequency peak is
Vol. 24, No. 24 | 28 Nov 2016 | OPTICS EXPRESS 27833
only around ~20Hz, while the rest of the frequency components are mostly below 150Hz.
From the temporal characteristics of the output laser, the occurrence of the TMI around the
roll-over output power is verified.
The beam profiles of the output laser at the operation of P1, P2 and P3 are shown in Fig.
3(d). The measured output laser beam profiles show no evidence of obvious deterioration,
despite the operation of P2 and P3 are around the TMI threshold. Typically, when the TMI
occurs, there is energy coupling between the fundamental mode and the high order modes,
which can be observed in the beam profiles of the output laser. In this experiment, modal
coupling cannot be observed from the output beam profiles. This can be explained from the
increased high order mode loss in the gain fiber induced by coiling. In the experiment, the
gain fiber was coiled in circles with a minimum diameter of ~10cm. At the operation of
~1070nm, the gain fiber supports only the LP01 and LP11 modes. According to the classic
fiber bending loss theory in Ref [39], the bending loss of the LP11 mode at the coiling
diameter of ~10cm is over 20dB/m. Owing to the bending loss of the fiber, when TMI occurs
in the laser oscillator the coupled high-order modes experience higher modal loss and leak
into the inner cladding of the fiber. The leaked power then gets dumped in the cladding light
stripper regions, which causes the decrease of the laser efficiency and the output power. Since
the high-order modes are stripped out, the output laser maintains good beam profile around
the TMI threshold.
Fig. 3. Performance of the laser oscillator with co-pumping, (a) the dependence of output laser
power and standard deviation on the co-pumping powers (b) time domain signals of the output
laser (c) Fourier spectra (d) beam profiles at three different power levels.
It should be noted that the frequencies of the periodic fluctuation in this work are several
times lower than the dynamic TMI in single-pass fiber amplifiers, which are mostly in kHz
level. To the best of our knowledge, there are only two reports of the static/quasi-static TMI
up to date, which are both theoretical modeling published in this year [37,40]. The first is a
modeling of quasi-static degradation induced by photodarkening effect in single-pass fiber
amplifier [40]. It predicted a power transfer from the fundamental mode to a higher mode
Vol. 24, No. 24 | 28 Nov 2016 | OPTICS EXPRESS 27834
with low frequency offset. The other is a modeling of static thermo-optic instability in a
double-pass fiber amplifier [37]. It predicted a static mode deformation, which is induced by
the interaction of light propagating in either direction with thermo-optics index perturbations
caused by light propagation in the opposition direction. In our work, the experimentally
observed TMI in the laser oscillator provide similar quasi-static mode instability with low
modulation frequency. Unfortunately, there is no suitable theoretical model for the fiber laser
oscillators which can provide simulated details of the instability so far. Considering that the
laser oscillators and the double-pass fiber amplifiers share the similarity of bidirectional
signal propagation, we think the reported modeling of the static TMI in the double-pass fiber
amplifiers can be taken as the reference.
3.2 Laser performance with bidirectional-pumping
Comparing with co-pumping, bidirectional-pumping can dissipate the heat load in the gain
fiber. Since the TMI is correlated with the heat load, the bidirectional-pumping scheme can be
employed to mitigate the TMI and further scale the output power. Moreover, the
bidirectional-pumping enables that more pump power can be combined. Recent reports on the
bidirectional pumped laser amplifiers show notable achievement in power scaling [10,41].
In the bidirectional-pumping scheme, the output powers and the corresponding standard
deviation of the recorded time traces at different pumping powers are shown in Fig. 4(a). The
output power increases almost linearly with the pump power with a slope efficiency of 74.5%.
A maximum output of 2.5kW is achieved at the pumping power of ~3.46kW. No evidence of
optical efficiency decline is observed in the power scaling process. The temporal signals are
recorded and the standard deviations are calculated at different power levels. No remarkable
increase of the standard deviation is observed. The inset in the Fig. 4(a) is the beam profile at
~2.5kW operation. The output laser beam quality is also measured, and the M2 factors at
~2.5kW are around 1.3 in both axes. The temporal characteristic of the output laser at ~2.5kW
is shown in Fig. 4(b). The inset is the corresponding Fourier spectra. As we can see, the time
domain signal remains quite stable at the operation of ~2.5kW. In the Fourier spectra, there
are no frequency components of TMI. So, it is confirmed that TMI doesn’t occur at the
operation of ~2.5kW.
Fig. 4. Performance of the laser oscillator with bidirectional-pumping (a) the dependence of
output power and standard deviation on the pump power (b) temporal characteristic at ~2.5kW.
The optical spectra of the output laser are recorded with an optical spectra analyzer, as
shown in Fig. 5. The spectral bandwidth of the output laser broadens gradually during the
power scaling. At the operation of ~2.5kW, the full width half maximum (FWHM) spectral
bandwidth is ~5.2nm. For three parts of cladding light strippers are utilized, no pumping light
is observed in the spectra. In the bidirectional pumping scheme, the Raman stokes light is
observed when the laser output power reaches ~1.9kW. At the operation of ~2.5kW, the
intensity of Raman stokes light is ~20dB below the signal laser and the power ratio is less
Vol. 24, No. 24 | 28 Nov 2016 | OPTICS EXPRESS 27835
than 1%. For further power scaling of the all-fiber laser oscillator, the SRS has to be firstly
mitigated. To be noted, in the co-pumping scheme, the Raman stokes light is observed at
~1.36kW, which is relatively lower than the ~1.9kW in the bidirectional pumping scheme.
Bidirectional pumping also benefits from the advantage of a higher SRS threshold.
4. Conclusion
In summary, we have constructed a bidirectional-pumped ytterbium-doped all-fiber laser
oscillator and investigated the laser performances with co-pumping and bidirectional pumping
schemes respectively. When the laser oscillator was co-pumped, TMI was observed at
~1.6kW and limited further power scaling. Around the TMI threshold, the temporal
characteristics were recorded and details of the evolution were provided. By employing
bidirectional-pumping instead of co-pumping, the TMI was remarkably mitigated and the
output power was further scaled to 2.5kW with a slope efficiency of 74.5%. At the output
power of ~2.5kW, the beam quality(M2) was ~1.3, and the FWHM bandwidth was 5.2nm.
The Raman stokes light was ~20dB below the signal and occupied less than 1% of the total
power. For further power scaling of the laser oscillator, the SRS has to be mitigated.
Funding
National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant No. 61505260, 11274386);
National Key Research and Development Program of Ministry of Science and Technology of
China (Grant No. 2016YFB0402200).
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Mr. Rongtao Su, Mr. Pengfei Ma, Mr. Xiaoyong Xu, Mr. Zichao
Zhou, Mr. Dong Zhi, Mr. Lin Chen and Mr. Long Huang, for the help in measuring the
performance of the laser oscillator in the experiment.