Thermal Characteristics of an Ytterbium-Doped Fiber Amplifier Operating at 1060 and 1080 nm

Abstract

We experimentally analyze the temperature dependence of an ytterbium-doped fiber amplifier (YDFA) operating at 1060 and 1080 nm, investigating its spectroscopic characteristics and gain properties in the temperature range of 10 to 100 °C. Our measurement indicates that the change in the operating temperature can give rise to a significant effect on the YDFA performance, which also significantly depends on the operating wavelength. At the output power level of approximately 1.5 W, the temperature change from 10 to 100 °C resulted in a signal power drop of approximately 16% at 1060 nm and 5% at 1080 nm, respectively. While this is due mainly to the temperature-dependent spectroscopic characteristics of the gain fiber, it also depends on the input signal and pump power levels. We numerically model this behavior, based on the given experimental conditions and measured fiber parameters. Our numerical results are in good agreement with the experimental results and further suggest that higher seed power to the amplifier should help in minimizing the temperature dependence of the YDFA.