3.25 kW all-fiberized and polarization-maintained Yb-doped amplifier with a 20 GHz linewidth and near-diffraction-limited beam quality

Abstract

In this paper, we demonstrate a high-power, narrow-linewidth, polarization-maintaining fiber amplifier with near-diffraction-limited beam quality. By optimizing the phase modulation signal, a nearly top-hat-shaped spectrum was generated for self-pulsing suppressing. That results in doubling the self-pulsing threshold we got from conventional white noise signal phase modulation with the same optical linewidth. Based on an optimized signal and a high power, polarization-maintaining, counter-pumped fiber amplifier, we obtain a 3.25 kW narrow-linewidth linearly polarized laser output with a linewidth of ∼20<i>G</i><i>H</i><i>z</i>, the polarization extinction ratio is about 15 dB, and the <i>M</i>² is less than 1.22 at the maximum output power. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a narrow-linewidth, linear polarization, all-fiber amplifier with 3.25 kW laser output.