High-Power Single-Frequency Fiber Amplifiers

TL;DR

This paper reviews high-power single-frequency fiber amplifiers, discussing their key features, limitations due to nonlinear instabilities, and emerging strategies like wavefront shaping and cooling to overcome power scaling barriers.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the current state, challenges, and innovative solutions for high-power single-frequency fiber amplifiers.

Findings

Nonlinear instabilities limit power scaling.

Mitigation techniques include specialized architectures.

Emerging strategies show promise for overcoming current limitations.

Abstract

High-power single-frequency fiber amplifiers are increasingly dominant in technologies that require high optical power, stability, and coherence simultaneously. In this chapter, we first provide an overview of their key characteristics, applications, architectures, and components. We then review the nonlinear acousto- and thermo-optical instabilities that limit power scaling and summarize the primary mitigation techniques. Finally, we discuss multimode excitation with wavefront shaping and anti-Stokes fluorescence cooling as two emerging strategies to circumvent the limitations of current approaches.