We present the experimental and theoretical analysis of a mode modulator in a few mode LMA fiber. The mode modulator consists of a section with a modified refractive index alongside the fiber core in the cladding, disturbing the guidance of the modes in the core. The extent of excitation of these disturbed modes depends on the overlap of the excited undisturbed and disturbed modes. At the end of the modulator, undisturbed modes will be excited again in the fiber core, in dependency of the spatial field distribution of the disturbed modes at the boundary. In the mode modulator disturbed higher order modes lead to modal interference, causing a dependency of the spatial distribution of the light in the mode modulator on the propagation length of the disturbed modes. Hence, the modal output field depends on the length of the mode modulator. For the experiments, the mode modulator was inscribed directly into the LMA fiber with ultrashort laser pulses. During the inscription process the modal content at the end of the fiber was measured using a computer generated hologram as a correlation filter. In dependency of the length of the modulator strong oscillations between the content of the fundamental and the higher order modes are observable. In the case of an initially excited fundamental mode, its content could be reduced to below 5%, whereat the content of the LP11 modes was up to 90%. While measurement and simulation show qualitative agreement, differences are caused by inhomogeneities of the refractive index modifications.
High-power fiber lasers have reached kW power levels. The most important non-linear process limiting power scaling of industrial fiber lasers is stimulated Raman scattering. Long period gratings (LPGs) couple forward propagating core light to forward propagating cladding light and are well suited as a filter for the unwanted Raman scattering. In this paper we show for the first time of our knowledge the inscription of LPGs in large-mode-area (LMA) fibers with ultra-short laser pulses. We investigate the influence of different inscription parameters with a 3D, spatially resolved measurement of the induced index change. We present results from gratings with an attenuation of 8.5 dB at the desired wavelength with a small out-of-band loss of 1 dB.
We present a selective mode filter inscribed with ultrashort pulses directly into a few mode large mode area (LMA) fiber. The mode filter consists of two refractive index modifications alongside the fiber core in the cladding. The refractive index modifications, which were of approximately the same order of magnitude as the refractive index difference between core and cladding have been inscribed by nonlinear absorption of femtosecond laser pulses (800 nm wavelength, 120 fs pulse duration). If light is guided in the core, it will interact with the inscribed modifications causing modes to be coupled out of the core. In order to characterize the mode filter, we used a femtosecond inscribed fiber Bragg grating (FBG), which acts as a wavelength and therefore mode selective element in the LMA fiber. Since each mode has different Bragg reflection wavelengths, an FBG in a multimode fiber will exhibit multiple Bragg reflection peaks. In our experiments, we first inscribed the FBG using the phase mask scanning technique. Then the mode filter was inscribed. The reflection spectrum of the FBG was measured in situ during the inscription process using a supercontinuum source. The reflectivities of the LP01 and LP11 modes show a dependency on the length of the mode filter. Two stages of the filter were obtained: one, in which the LP11 mode was reduced by 60% and one where the LP01 mode was reduced by 80%. The other mode respectively showed almost no losses. In conclusion, we could selectively filter either the fundamental or higher order modes.
Ground based near-infrared observations have long been plagued by poor sensitivity when compared to visible
observations as a result of the bright narrow line emission from atmospheric OH molecules. The GNOSIS instrument
recently commissioned at the Australian Astronomical Observatory uses Photonic Lanterns in combination with
individually printed single mode fibre Bragg gratings to filter out the brightest OH-emission lines between 1.47 and
1.70μm. GNOSIS, reported in a separate paper in this conference, demonstrates excellent OH-suppression, providing
very “clean” filtering of the lines. It represents a major step forward in the goal to improve the sensitivity of ground
based near-infrared observation to that possible at visible wavelengths, however, the filter units are relatively bulky and
costly to produce.
The 2nd generation fibre OH-Suppression filters based on multicore fibres are currently under development. The
development aims to produce high quality, cost effective, compact and robust OH-Suppression units in a single optical
fibre with numerous isolated single mode cores that replicate the function and performance of the current generation of
“conventional” photonic lantern based devices. In this paper we present the early results from the multicore fibre
development and multicore fibre Bragg grating imprinting process.
We report on a novel approach for the generation of radially and azimuthally polarized light employing a fiber mode
filter. The mode filter consists of a Fiber Bragg Grating written in a strongly guiding fiber with lifted modal degeneracy.
These kinds of fibers guide radially and azimuthally polarized modes with non-degenerated, i.e. distinct, effective
refractive indexes. The Fiber Bragg Grating reflects light only if the Bragg condition is fulfilled. In case of strongly
guiding fibers the radially and azimuthally polarized modes are guided with different effective refractive indices and,
consequently, the Bragg condition is fulfilled at different wavelengths. If the reflection bandwidth of the Fiber Bragg
Grating is narrow enough, the radially and azimuthally polarized modes are spectrally separated. Thus, with such a mode
filter it is possible to filter the radially or azimuthally polarized mode. This filter is suitable for its integration in a
resonator for stable, compact and high polarization purity azimuthally and radially polarized all-fiber oscillators. In a
first experiment an azimuthally polarized mode filter consisting of a commercially available step index fiber and a
femtosecond written Fiber Bragg Grating was fabricated. The experimental results are presented and discussed.
We report on a new approach for experimentally analyzing transversal mode coupling in few mode fiber Bragg
gratings (FBGs). Utilizing a spatial light modulator (SLM) enables real-time modulation of the incident spatial
light distribution coupled into the fiber. Thus, individual transversal fiber modes can be excited, allowing for
effort-less mode switching and mode rotation. Simultaneously, the transmitted and reflected modes are analyzed.
We use this setup to demonstrate LP mode discrimination by asymmetric FBGs which favor reflection of a
designated LP11 mode orientation for few mode large mode area fibers.
We report on the ultrashort pulse inscription of chirped fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) using a constant phase mask and a
deformed wave front. To analyze the influence of wave front deformations on the grating period, a numerical model was
developed. It is based on a ray optical solution of the diffraction of an arbitrary wave front at a phase mask with a
constant period, where the wave front is described by Zernike polynomials. Generally, a plane wave front generates an
interference pattern with half the phase mask period. A defocus changes the grating period, while higher order
aberrations like coma or spherical aberration yield a chirp along the inscribed grating. Additionally, the grating period
depends on the distance of phase mask and fiber. To experimentally deform the wave front of the inscription beam, a
cylindrical tuning lens was introduced to the setup. Due to decentering and tilting of the tuning lens, higher order
aberrations were generated. Furthermore the fiber was tilted with respect to the phase mask. A chirped FBG with a
FWHM bandwidth of 6.2 nm was realized.
We have demonstrated an all-fiber thulium laser system that, without any intracavity polarizing elements or freespace
components, yielded a stable polarization extinction ratio (PER) of ~18 dB. The system is based on singlemode
polarization-maintaining silica fiber and its cavity is formed from each a high and low reflectivity
femtosecond laser written fiber Bragg grating resonant at 2054 nm. The output of the fiber is not only highly
polarized, but maintains a narrow linewidth of 78 pm at its maximum output power of 5.24 W. The high PER
without any polarizing elements in the cavity is of great interest and makes the systems useful for spectral beam
combining and other applications which require polarization dependent optical elements.
We present apodised Bragg waveguides inscribed in fused silica using a high repetition rate fs laser system. By varying the
modulation with a pulse picker, the mean refractive index over the grating length could be kept constant, while the grating
strength is varied. Thus, Bragg waveguides with zero crossing Gaussian modulation profile could be demonstrated. The
side-lobes were suppressed by about 10 dB compared to a uniform grating.
A polarization-maintaining (PM), narrow-linewidth, continuous wave, thulium fiber laser is demonstrated. The laser
cavity is formed from two femtosecond-laser-written fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) and operates at 2054 nm. The
laser output possesses both narrow spectral width (78 pm) and a high polarization extinction ratio of ~18 dB at 5.24
W of output power. This laser is a unique demonstration of a PM thulium fiber system based on a two FBG cavity
that produces high PER without any free-space elements. Such a narrow linewidth source will be useful for
applications such as spectral beam combining which often employ polarization dependent combining elements.
Focussing ultrashort laser pulses allows for inscribing fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) directly into rare earth doped
fiber cores - without prior photosensitivity treatment. High reflective FBGs can be written into active Large
Mode Area (LMA) Fibers with 20 micron core diameter using a phase mask scanning technique. Here, we
demonstrate fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs), which cover only a fraction of the core. With this additional degree
of freedom it is possible to taylor the reflectivity of individual modes. We show for example how those FBGs
can be used in few mode LMA fibers to suppress reflections into higher order modes.
We report on the development of a high power monolithic CW fiber oscillator with an output power of 215 W in a 20μm
core diameter few-mode Large Mode Area fiber (LMA). The key parameters for stable operation are reviewed. With
these optimizations the root mean square of the output power fluctuations can be reduced to less than 0.5 % on a
timescale of 20 s, which represents an improvement of more than a factor 5 over a non-optimized fiber laser.
With a real-time measurement of the mode content of the fiber laser it can be shown that the few-mode nature of LMA
fibers is the main factor for the residual instability of our optimized fiber laser. The root of the problem is that Fiber
Bragg Gratings (FBGs) written in multimode fibers exhibit a multi-peak reflexion spectrum in which each resonance
corresponds to a different transversal mode. This reflectivity spectrum stimulates multimode laser operation, which
results in power and pointing instabilities due to gain competition between the different transversal modes .
To stabilize the temporal and spatial behavior of the laser output, we propose an innovative passive in-fiber transversal
mode filter based on modified FBG-Fabry Perot structure. This structure provides different reflectivities to the different
transversal modes according to the transversal distribution of their intensity profile. Furthermore, this structure can be
completely written into the active fiber using fs-laser pulses. Moreover, this concept scales very well with the fiber core
diameter, which implies that there is no performance loss in fibers with even larger cores. In consequence this structure is
inherently power scalable and can, therefore, be used in kW-level fiber laser systems.
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