Selective Excitation and Amplification of Peak-Power-Scalable Out-of-Phase Supermode in Yb-Doped Multicore Fiber

We demonstrate selective excitation and coherent amplification in the multicore fiber of the out-of-phase supermode that has equal intensities but interleaved 0/pi phases in the neighboring cores. The out-of-phase supermode is beneficial due to its stability at arbitrary high powers, whereas the fundamental supermode becomes unstable at relatively high powers. We fabricated a double-clad all solid silica fiber with six highly Yb-doped coupled cores arranged in a ring structure. We obtained amplification of 50 picosecond chirped pulses up to similar to 1 mu J energy with measured content of the out-of-phase mode of >80%. The experimental results were supported by 3D numerical simulation demonstrating the possibility of the out-of-phase supermode amplification in the multicore fibers with real parameters without degradation of supermode composition for powers up to damage threshold in silica glass.