Large mode area fiber lasers and their applications

Abstract

The area of fiber lasers has undergone rapid developments in recent years. Gone are the days when fiber lasers were seen as something of an irrelevant curiosity, offering interesting performance features, but always with power levels or other performance limitations, that made them unsuitable for all but a few applications. Improvements in the area of high-power, high-brightness semiconductor pump lasers, and the development of techniques, such as cladding-pumping, have changed this viewpoint markedly. Most significantly, fiber lasers have shed the "low power" label and it is now widely appreciated that the heat-dissipation characteristics of the fiber environment, coupled with the high efficiencies demonstrated (in excess of 80%), actually make fiber lasers a preferred candidate for many high-power applications. Moreover, major advances in fiber Bragg grating fabrication and more sophisticated fiber designs and pump coupling techniques, have at the same time improved device performance and increased the versatility, functionality and practicality of the technology; allowing the development of a broad range of robust, practical optical sources.

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ORCID for D.J. Richardson: orcid.org/0000-0002-7751-1058

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