Millijoule pulse energy Q-switched short-length fiber laser.

We report on a Q-switched short-length fiber laser producing 100 W of average output power at 100 kHz repetition rate and pulse durations as short as 17 ns. Up to 2 mJ of energy and sub-10-ns pulse duration are extracted at lower repetition rates. This performance is obtained by employing a rod-type ytterbium-doped photonic crystal fiber with a 70 microm core as gain medium, allowing for very short pulse durations, high energy storage, and emission of a single-transverse-mode beam.

Extended single-mode photonic crystal fiber lasers.

We report on an ytterbium-doped photonic crystal fiber with a core diameter of 60 microm and mode-field-area of ~2000 microm(2) of the emitted fundamental mode. Together with the short absorption length of 0.5 m this fiber possesses a record low nonlinearity which makes this fiber predestinated for the amplification of short laser pulses to very high peak powers. In a first continuous-wave experiment a power of 320 W has been extracted corresponding to 550 W per meter. To our knowledge this represents the highest power per unit length ever reported for fiber lasers. Furthermore, the robust single-transverse-mode propagation in a passive 100 microm core fiber with a similar design reveals the potential of extended large-mode-area photonic crystal fibers.