Pulsed Pumping for Pulsewidth Tunable Nanosecond Ytterbium-Doped Fiber Laser

High efficiency, good robustness, and low amplified spontaneous emission are among the key factors of the high power ytterbium-doped pulsed fiber laser. In this letter, we propose an optimized pulsed pumping design for the nanosecond ytterbium-doped fiber laser with tunable pulse repetition rate and pulsewidth. For the pulsed pumping, the pumping power is kept at the maximal reachable power level and the pumping duration is modulated according to the pulsewidth. At each pulsewidth, the pumping duration is fixed for every seeding pulse. The performance of this laser at 130- and 20-ns seeding pulsewidth is experimentally analyzed. Simulation results are provided with the same configuration of the experiments. The results show that better performance of the laser is achieved. This technique is meaningful and strongly recommended for the design of high power nanosecond ytterbium-doped fiber laser.