Comprehensive Investigations on 1053 nm Random Distributed Feedback Fiber Laser

• Main Authors: Mengqiu Fan, Zhaoyu Zon, Xiaocheng Tian, Dangpeng Xu, Dandan Zhou, Rui Zhang, Na Zhu, Lianghua Xie, Hongxun Li, Jingqin Su, Qihua Zhu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2017-01-01
• Series: IEEE Photonics Journal
• Subjects: Random fiber laser; random distributed feedback; ytterbium-doped fiber; Rayleigh scattering.
• Online Access: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7856972/

We design a 1053 nm Yb³⁺-doped random fiber laser (YRFL) based on the combination of Yb³⁺ -doped fiber (YDF) and single mode fiber (SMF), in which the YDF provides active gain, while SMF offers random distributed feedback. The numerical model is established based on the rate equation of Yb³⁺-doped laser, and it is modified and developed to calculate the power performance of YRFL. The numerical results show that the YDF's length and the pumping scheme could influence the laser power performance. Then, the forward and backward pumped YRFL both with 9.5 m YDF and 2 km SMF are experimentally demonstrated whose threshold powers are 1 and 1.1 W, respectively. The obtained optical slope efficiencies are 45.2% and 40.9% for these two cases. The experimental results agree with the calculated results well. This work gives a general study on active gain based random fiber lasers, which can enrich the operation wavelength range of random fiber laser and may broaden its application fields to high energy large-scale laser facilities.