High Power Continuous-Wave Er-doped Fiber Lasers

Recent years, high power fiber lasers at the spectral region near 1550 nm attract a lot of attention as promising sources for numerous civil and military applications. There are four main type of lasers allowing to generate high power radiation at this spectral range: Er/Yb-co doped fiber lasers, Yb-free Er-doped fiber lasers cladding-pumped at 980 nm, Er-doped fiber lasers core-pumped by Raman lasers at 1480 nm, and Er-doped fiber laser in-band pumped at 1532 nm. In this chapter we review current states, limiting factors and future perspectives of all these approaches.