All-fiber picosecond laser system at 1.5 μm based on amplification in short and heavily doped phosphate-glass fiber

Amplification of ultrashort pulses in doped fibers is limited by an onset of nonlinear effects in the fiber. At the 1.5-μm wavelength single-mode fibers typically have anomalous dispersion. The self-phase modulation combined with dispersion leads to instability of multinanojoule pulses in such fibers. Various techniques developed to amplify pulses beyond the nonlinearity limit typically rely on a delicate balance between dispersive and nonlinear effects in different parts of the laser system. We report a simple all-fiber alternative to these complex techniques that utilizes a rapid amplification of pulses in a short and heavily doped phosphate-glass active fiber. In our preliminary experiments, picosecond pulses at 1.5 μm generated by a passively mode-locked fiber oscillator at a repetition rate of 70 MHz are amplified in a 15-cm-long heavily Er-Yb codoped fiber amplifier to the average output power of 1.425 W. The pulse energy and peak power reach 20.4 nJ and 16.6 kW, respectively, while the pulse distortion is minimal in both temporal and spectral domains. Further power up-scaling is possible by using active phosphate fiber with a large mode area, in the amplifier stage.