Compact, high repetition rate, 42 MW peak power, 1925 nm, thulium-doped fiber chirped-pulse amplification system with dissipative soliton seed laser

Abstract

© 2019 OSA - The Optical Society. All rights reserved. We report the demonstration of a high average- and peak-power, 1925 nm, thulium-fiber based chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system. A compact, dissipative soliton thulium-fiber, mode-locked seed produced pre-chirped pulses with 25 ps duration, 45 mW output power and repetition rate of 15.7 MHz. After stretching to 105 ps in 83 m of normal dispersion fiber, the pulses were amplified in a core-pumped pre-amplifier and a cladding pumped power amplifier to average output powers of 28 W and 30 W with forward and backward pumping, respectively, with the output power limited only by the available pump power. After a pair of fused silica transmission gratings with an efficiency of 71%, the amplified pulses were re-compressed to 297 fs yielding pulses with a peak power of 4.2 MW (backward pumped) and a pulse energy of 1.27 µJ.