Study on the power scaling and mode instability property in an all-fiber narrow-linewidth tapered fiber amplifier

TL;DR

This paper presents a high-power narrow-linewidth tapered fiber amplifier demonstrating effective SBS suppression and detailed analysis of mode instability as the primary power scaling limitation.

Contribution

It is the first detailed experimental study on mode instability in a tapered fiber amplifier, highlighting MI as the main limitation for high-power operation.

Findings

Achieved 260 W output power with no SBS or MI

Mode instability becomes dominant at high power levels

Optimizations discussed for suppressing SBS and MI

Abstract

We develop a high-power narrow-linewidth fiber amplifier based on a tapered Yb-doped fiber. In the experiment, the narrow end of the tapered fiber is used as the input port of both pump source and signal light to form a robust all-fiber configuration. The stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is effectively suppressed owing to its gradually increased mode area as well as continuously changed Brillouin frequency shift dependent on the core diameter. As a result, an output power of 260 W without SBS and mode instability (MI) is obtained, with a slope efficiency of 71.3 % and a narrow linewidth of ~2GHz. However, the MI rather than SBS is observed when output power reaches 260 W. The features of MI are experimentally studied in detail. It is pointed out that, the MI seems the primary and durative limitation factor of the tapered fiber amplifier for high-power narrow-linewidth output, although it has advantage to reduce other nonlinear effect. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first detailed experimental study on MI in a tapered fiber. At last, some worthwhile discussion about the optimization of the tapered fiber and the whole system for both SBS and MI suppression is conducted based on the present and previous results.