We demonstrate a mid-infrared Raman-soliton continuum extending from 1.9 to 3 µm in a highly germanium-doped silica-clad fiber, pumped by a nanotube mode-locked thulium-doped fiber system, delivering 12 kW sub-picosecond pulses at 1.95 µm. This simple and robust source of light covers a portion of the atmospheric transmission window.

This thesis reports work on passive mode-locking of thulium-doped and erbium-doped fiber ring lasers using the technique of polarization additive pulse mode-locking (PAPM). A self-starting, mode-locked Tm+3-doped fiber laser was demonstrated with 360 to 500 fsec pulses tunable from 1.8 to 1.9 pm, the largest tuning range demonstrated from a rare-earth doped fiber. This laser operated in the sol...

A compact fiber laser is demonstrated with use of a Gires-Tournois compensator and a short length (2-4 cm-long) of highly doped ytterbium (Yb) fiber providing net anomalous group-velocity dispersion. With use of a novel semiconductor saturable absorber mirror based on GaInNAs structure, self-started 1.5-ps-pulse mode-locked operation was obtained at 1023 nm with a repetition rate of 95 MHz. A m...

There is worldwide considerable interest in the study and development of high-power Yb-doped continuous wave (CW) and pulsed fiber lasers for various material processing applications. Although it appears to be trivial to generate high-power CW output from Yb-doped CW fiber lasers by pumping with high-power CW laser diodes; however, it is not so easy to generate truly CW output without amplitude...

An all-fiber amplifier for a single-frequency blue laser was demonstrated for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. Over 150 mW continuous-wave single-transverse-mode blue laser output was obtained with a 10 m 1000 ppm thulium-doped fluoride fiber pumped by a 1125 nm fiber laser at a power of 2 W. The output power was limited due to the onset of the competitive lasing at 783 nm. Photoda...

Thermal effects, which limit the average power, can be minimized by using low-doped, longer gain fibers, whereas the presence of nonlinear effects requires use of high-doped, shorter fibers to maximize the peak power. We propose the use of varying doping levels along the gain fiber to circumvent these opposing requirements. By analogy to dispersion management and nonlinearity management, we ref...

We propose and demonstrate a novel sensor by using a single-fiber Bragg grating that can simultaneously measure strain and temperature with the aid of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier. By using a linear variation in the amplified spontaneous emission power of the erbium-doped fiber amplifier with temperature, we determine the temperature. By subtracting the temperature effect from the fiber Brag...

For the first time, a non-destructive technique for spatially resolving the location and relative concentration of rare-earth dopants in an optical fiber is demonstrated. This novel technique is based on computerized tomographic detection of spontaneous emission and achieves micron-scale spatial resolution with the aid of oil-immersion imaging. In addition to elucidating interactions between th...

In the paper, we report on the development of a synthesis and melting method of phosphate glasses designed for active microstructured fiber manufacturing. Non-doped glass synthesized in a P₂O₅-Al₂O₃-BaO-ZnO-MgO-Na₂O oxide system served as the matrix material; meanwhile, the glass was doped with 6 mol% (18 wt%) of Yb₂O₃, as fiber core. The glasses were well-fitted in relation to optical (refract...

A novel all-fiber laser based on a highly GeO2-doped dispersion-shifted Tm-codoped fiber, pumped at 1.56 µm wavelength and lasing at 1.862 µm wavelength with a slope efficiency up to 37% was demonstrated. The single-mode Tm-doped fiber with the 55GeO2-45SiO2 core was fabricated for the first time by MCVD technique. The laser produces spectral side bands, resulting from the four-wave mixing owin...