Specialty Fibers and Their Applications in Fiber Lasers

Two factors are the keys to the rapid commercial development of fiber lasers in the last decade. The first is the technology development of specialty fibers, especially double-clad rare-earth-doped silica-based optical fibers and the second is the development of high power pump diodes. I will take this opportunity to review our work in the development of specialty fibers and their applications in fiber lasers. I will try to cover three areas of development, mode-area scaling using leakage channel fibers, highly ytterbium-doped low-photo-darkening silica-based fibers which can be closely index-matched to silica, and silica suspended-core fibers for highly efficient super-continuum generations.