When
Where
Title
High-power Single-Frequency Multimode-Fiber Amplifiers
Abstract
High-power single-frequency laser sources have a wide range of applications from coherent beam combination to LiDAR and gravitational wave detection. For a fiber laser amplifier, it is difficult to achieve simultaneously high average power and high beam quality. Single-mode fibers are widely employed to ensure output beam quality, but at high power nonlinear effects are strong due to tight optical confinement in the fiber. A major bottleneck for further power scaling of single-frequency fiber amplifiers is the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). We explore a highly multimode fiber amplifier, where stimulated Brillouin scattering is greatly suppressed due to reduction of light intensity in a large fiber core and broadening of Brillouin scattering spectrum by multimode excitation. To control the output beam profile, we apply a spatial wavefront shaping technique to the input light of a nonlinear amplifier to focus the output beam to a diffraction-limited spot outside the fiber facet. Our multimode fiber amplifier can operate at high power with high efficiency. The superior performance of our MMF amplifier reveals its potential in further power scaling while maintaining both high coherence and beam quality.
Bio
Hui Cao is the John C. Malone Professor of Applied Physics and of Physics, and a professor of Electrical Engineering at Yale University. She received her Ph.D. degree in Applied Physics from Stanford University in 1997. Her technical interests and activities are in the areas of complex lasers, mesoscopic physics, complex photonic materials and devices, nanophotonics, and biophotonics. She authored or co-authored one monograph, ten book-chapters, twelve review articles and 290 journal papers. Cao is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
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