Microstructured soft glass fibers for advanced fiber lasers

Combining novel highly-doped phosphate glasses and advanced fiber drawing techniques, we fabricated and tested single-frequency fiber lasers that generate powers of more than 2 W. We demonstrate enhanced performance employing active photonic crystal fiber compared to more conventional devices that are based on large core step-index fiber. We also present results on phase-locking and coherently combining the output of up to 37 fiber cores into a single, near-Gaussian laser beam. To achieve exclusive oscillation of the fundamental in-phase supermode, several all-fiber laser cavities have been designed, numerically analyzed, fabricated, and tested. We will report on a 10 cm long monolithic all-fiber laser that emits more than 12 W of optical power and is based on combining the output of 19 active cores. All the cores are integrated within the same cladding and arranged in a two-dimensional isometric array. Our truly all-fiber approach that omits any free-space optical elements lead to a multi-emitter laser device that is free of optical alignment and robust against external perturbations.