Raman-shifted wavelength-selectable pulsed fiber laser with high repetition rate and high pulse energy in the visible.

ABSTRACT

A high-pulse-energy, diffraction-limited, wavelength-selectable, visible source, based on Raman frequency shifting of a frequency-doubled Yb-doped fiber laser, has been studied. The relative length-scaling laws of Raman gain and self-phase modulation push the design towards short fiber lengths with large core size. It is experimentally demonstrated that the Raman clean-up effect in a graded-index multi-mode fiber is not sufficient to obtain diffraction-limited beam quality in the short fiber length. Thus, a large-core photonic crystal fiber is used to maintain diffraction-limited performance and output pulse energies of ~1 µJ, at a 1-MHz repetition rate and 1.3-ns pulse-width are successfully achieved. This step-tunable visible source should find applications in photoacoustic microscopy.