Compact, high repetition rate, 4.2 MW peak power, 1925 nm, thulium-doped fiber chirped-pulse amplification system with dissipative soliton seed laser

• Published in: Optics express Vol. 27; no. 25; pp. 36741 - 36749
• Main Authors: Ren, Zhengqi, Fu, Qiang, Xu, Lin, Price, Jonathan H V, Alam, Shaif-Ul, Richardson, David J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 09-12-2019
• ISSN: 1094-4087; 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/OE.27.036741

We report the demonstration of a high average- and peak-power, 1925 nm, thulium-fiber based chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system. A compact, dissipative soliton thulium-fiber, mode-locked seed produced pre-chirped pulses with 25 ps duration, 45 mW output power and repetition rate of 15.7 MHz. After stretching to 105 ps in 83 m of normal dispersion fiber, the pulses were amplified in a core-pumped pre-amplifier and a cladding pumped power amplifier to average output powers of 28 W and 30 W with forward and backward pumping, respectively, with the output power limited only by the available pump power. After a pair of fused silica transmission gratings with an efficiency of 71%, the amplified pulses were re-compressed to 297 fs yielding pulses with a peak power of 4.2 MW (backward pumped) and a pulse energy of 1.27 µJ.