Bidirectional pumped high power Raman fiber laser

This paper presents a 3.89 kW 1123 nm Raman all-fiber laser with an overall optical-to-optical efficiency of 70.9%. The system consists of a single-wavelength (1070 nm) seed and one-stage bidirectional 976 nm non-wavelength-stabilized laser diodes (LDs) pumped Yb-doped fiber amplifier. The unique part of this system is the application of non-wavelength-stabilized LDs in high power bidirectional pumping configuration fiber amplifier via refractive index valley fiber combiners. This approach not only increases the pump power, but also shortens the length of fiber by avoiding the usage of a multi-stage amplifier. Through both theoretical research and experiment, the bidirectional pumping configuration presented in this paper proves to be able to convert 976 nm pump laser to 1070 nm laser via Yb3+ transfer, which is then converted into 1123 nm Raman laser via the first-order Raman effect without the appearance of any higher-order Raman laser. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America