Compact 80 W, 1 MHz Femtosecond Chirped Pulse Amplification Laser System Based on a Yb-Doped Fiber and a Yb:YAG Thin Rod

• Published in: IEEE photonics journal Vol. 14; no. 2; pp. 1 - 6
• Main Authors: Xu, Yan, Peng, Zhigang, Shi, Yuhang, Wang, Beibei, Cheng, Zhaochen, Wang, Pu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01-04-2022; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Amplification; Amplifiers; Chirped pulse amplification; Depolarization; Doped fibers; Electrons; femtosecond laser; Femtosecond pulses; Fiber lasers; hybrid amplification; Laser beams; Lasers; Linear polarization; Optical fiber amplifiers; Optical fiber polarization; Polarizers; Power amplifiers; Power lasers; Pulse compression; Pulse duration; Pump lasers; Room temperature; Thin films; YAG lasers; Yb:YAG thin rod
• ISSN: 1943-0655; 1943-0655; 1943-0647
• DOI: 10.1109/JPHOT.2022.3157668

We present a hybrid chirped pulse amplification (CPA) laser system based on Yb-doped fiber and Yb:YAG thin rod. The laser system demonstrates a novel approach to generate high average power up to the 100-W level by using a Yb:YAG thin rod without pump guiding at room temperature. A Yb-doped all-fiber laser with an output power of 7 W and a repetition rate of 1 MHz is amplified to an output power of 126.2 W in simple and compact two-stage amplifiers consisting of a single fiber crystal (SCF) and a Yb:YAG thin rod. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest output power of Yb:YAG thin-rod amplifier with good beam quality obtained without pump guiding at room temperature. After using a thin-film polarizer (TFP) to remove the thermal depolarization, a linearly polarized ultrashort pulse laser with an average power of 115.2 W is obtained. An output power of 80.6 W with a pulse width of 580 fs is achieved after pulse compression. The central pulse contains 84.1% of the total pulse energy, corresponding to a pulse peak power of 116.9 MW.