The effect of the microstructure on transversely coupled laser light into the core of a photonic crystal fiber is investigated. Computational two-dimensional modeling and direct experimental measurements indicate that there exist angles and positions of the fiber microstructure, relative to a transversely launched laser beam, that preferentially couple laser light into the fiber core. The impli...

The fiber laser concept is proven technology for telecom applications where its single mode performance and reliability is essential. Newer generation diode-pumped fiber lasers are using pump diodes especially developed for telecom applications and therefore offer excellent controllability of the laser pulse length and pulse frequency. In recent years the output power of fiber lasers has increa...

We report a mode-locked ytterbium fiber laser that generates femtosecond pulses with energies as large as 2.2 nJ. This represents a 20-fold improvement in pulse energy compared with that of previously reported femtosecond Yb fiber lasers. The laser produces pulses as short as 52 fs, which are to our knowledge the shortest pulses to date from a Yb fiber laser. The laser is diode pumped by a wave...

Materials and Methods. Testing was conducted on single-use and reusable laser fibers in varying sizes – 200μm, 272μm, 365μm, 550μm and 1000μm. Sizes reflect the true core diameter of each fiber. Fixtures for the testing were built for the 200μm, 272μm, 365μm, 550μm fibers simulating the anatomical curvature that the fiber may be subjected to during a procedure (considered the short-term bend ra...

A study of using a single crystal photo-elastic modulator for active Q-switching of a fiber laser is presented. The modulator, which oscillates in a longitudinal eigenmode, was realized with LiTaO(3). This induces due to the photo-elastic effect a modulated artificial birefringence which modulates the polarization of passing light. When used together with a polarizer inside a laser cavity the l...

We demonstrate a wavelength-tunable, passively mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser based on graphene and chirped fiber Bragg grating. The saturable absorber used to enable passive mode-locking in the fiber laser is a section of microfiber covered by graphene film, which allows light-graphene interaction via the evanescent field of the microfiber. The wavelength of the laser can be continuously...

The bias-pumped gain-switched fiber laser proposed by us is considered a novel pulsed fiber laser based on a new pulsing mechanism. With a certain signal power seeding, synchronization of temporal evolution can be kept between the output signal laser and the pump. The seed laser can be supplied conveniently by a CW pump power which is named bias pump power. A pulsed pump is responsible for shap...

A mid-IR photothermal imaging system is presented that features an integrated ultrafast erbium-doped fiber probe laser for the first time. With a mid-IR tunable quantum cascade laser (QCL) as the pump laser, vibrational molecular modes are excited and the thermally-induced changes in the refractive index are measured with a probe laser. The custom-built, all-fiber ultrafast probe laser at telec...

We investigate the performance of a hybrid Q-switched (HQS) fiber laser that is constructed with a low RF-power driven acousto-optic (AO) Q-switch and an AlGaInAs semiconductor saturable absorber. Compared to a pure passively Q-switched (PQS) fiber laser, the ratio of timing jitter to pulse period can be significantly reduced from 2% to 0.3% in the regime of far above threshold. On the other ha...

A compact tunable 10 W picosecond source based on Yb-doped fiber amplification of gain switch laser diode has been demonstrated. A gain switch semiconductor laser diode was used as the seed source, and a multi-stage single mode Yb-doped fiber preamplifier was combined with two large mode area double-clad Yb-doped fiber main amplifiers to construct the amplification system. The tunable pulses wi...