Multi-mode fiber amplifier

Abstract

A laser utilizes a cavity design which allows the stable generation of high peak power pulses from mode-locked multi-mode fiber lasers, greatly extending the peak power limits of conventional mode-locked single-mode fiber lasers. Mode-locking may be induced by insertion of a saturable absorber into the cavity and by inserting one or more mode-filters to ensure the oscillation of the fundamental mode in the multi-mode fiber. The probability of damage of the absorber may be minimized by the insertion of an additional semiconductor optical power limiter into the cavity.

Claims

1. An optical apparatus comprising: a length of multi-mode optical fiber comprising a gain medium and configured to propagate a fundamental mode; a length of single mode optical fiber configured to propagate a single mode; and a splice between the length of multi-mode optical fiber and the length of single-mode optical fiber, wherein the single mode of the length of single mode optical fiber is matched to the fundamental mode of the length of multi-mode optical fiber.

2. The optical apparatus of claim 1, wherein an output end of the length of single mode optical fiber is spliced to an input end of the length of multi-mode optical fiber.

3. The optical apparatus of claim 1, wherein a tapered portion of the length of single mode optical fiber and the length of multimode optical fiber comprises the splice.

4. The optical apparatus of claim 3, wherein the tapered portion comprises an adiabatic taper.

5. The optical apparatus of claim 3, wherein the length of multi-mode optical fiber comprises a core, and a diameter of the core at an input end is sufficiently small to provide single mode operation of the length of multi-mode fiber at the tapered portion.

6. The optical apparatus of claim 1, wherein the length of multi-mode optical fiber comprises a core having a core diameter, and said gain medium is concentrated centrally within a fraction of the core diameter.

7. The optical apparatus of claim 6, wherein mode coupling into higher-order modes is reduced by gain guiding and the fundamental mode is preferentially amplified.

8. The optical apparatus of claim 1, wherein the length of multi-mode optical fiber comprises a fiber core having a total fiber core cross-sectional area, and the gain medium is confined in a cross-sectional area of the fiber core which is substantially smaller than the total fiber core cross-sectional area.

9. The optical apparatus of claim 1, wherein the optical apparatus is disposed in an optical cavity formed between a first mirror and a second mirror.

10. The optical apparatus of claim 9, wherein the optical cavity further comprises a pair of Faraday rotators.

11. The optical apparatus of claim 1, wherein the length of multi-mode optical fiber comprises a core having a diameter that is several tens of microns.

12. The optical apparatus of claim 1, wherein the optical apparatus is configured as a portion of a multi-mode fiber amplifier.

13. The optical apparatus of claim 1, wherein the splice is used to match the mode of the length single mode fiber to the fundamental mode of the length of multimode fiber.

14. The optical apparatus of claim 13, wherein the single mode of the length of single mode fiber is matched to the fundamental mode of the length of multimode fiber with an efficiency of approximately 90% or higher.

15. The optical apparatus of claim 1, wherein a core of the single mode fiber is thermally tapered to match the single mode of the length of single mode fiber to the fundamental mode of the length of multimode fiber.

16. An optical amplifier comprising the optical apparatus of claim 1, said optical amplifier configured to provide an amplified output substantially in a fundamental mode.

17. The optical amplifier of claim 16, wherein the length of multi-mode optical fiber comprises a double clad structure, the gain medium is cladding pumped, and the optical amplifier provides output power greater than 10 kW and a near diffraction limited output beam.

18. The optical amplifier of claim 17, wherein a core diameter of said length of multimode fiber is several tens of microns.

19. The optical amplifier of claim 17, wherein a core diameter of said length of multi-mode fiber is larger than a core diameter of said length of single mode fiber.

20. An optical apparatus for amplifying light, the apparatus comprising: a length of multi-mode optical fiber, said multi-mode optical fiber including a gain medium; an output for receiving amplified light from said length of multi-mode optical fiber; an energy source for exciting said gain medium; and an input for providing a beam of light to be amplified within said length of multi-mode fiber, said input comprising a near-diffraction limited laser source, said input optically coupled to said length of multi-mode fiber, said length of multi-mode fiber providing substantially single mode light at the output of said apparatus.

21. A light amplifier comprising: a length of multi-mode optical fiber, said multi-mode optical fiber including a gain medium; an energy source for exciting said gain medium; and an input for providing a near-diffraction limited beam of light to be amplified within said length of multi-mode fiber, said input optically coupled to said length of multi-mode fiber to provide substantially diffraction limited light at the output of said amplifier, said input comprising a near-diffraction limited laser source.

Description

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

(1) The following description of the preferred embodiments of the invention references the appended drawings, in which like elements bear identical reference numbers throughout.

(2) FIG. 1 is a schematic illustration showing the construction of a preferred embodiment of the present invention which utilizes end-pumping for injecting pump light into the multi-mode fiber.

(3) FIG. 2 is a graph showing the typical autocorrelation of pulses generated by the invention of FIG. 1.

(4) FIG. 3 is a graph showing the typical pulse spectrum generated by the invention of FIG. 1.

(5) FIG. 4 is a schematic illustration showing the construction of an alternate preferred embodiment utilizing a side-pumping mechanism for injecting pump light into the multi-mode fiber.

(6) FIG. 5 is a schematic illustration of an alternative embodiment which uses a length of positive dispersion fiber to introduce chirped pulses into the cavity.

(7) FIG. 6 is a schematic illustration of an alternative embodiment which uses chirped fiber gratings with negative dispersion in the laser cavity to produce high-energy, near bandwidth-limited pulses.

(8) FIGS. 7A and 7B illustrate polarization-maintaining multi-mode fiber cross sections which may be used to construct environmentally stable cavities in the absence of Faraday rotators.

(9) FIG. 8 is a schematic illustration of an alternative embodiment which utilizes one of the fibers illustrated in FIGS. 7A and 7B.

(10) FIGS. 9A, 9B and 9C illustrate the manner in which the fundamental mode of the multi-mode fibers of the present invention may be matched to the mode of a single mode fiber. These include a bulk optic imaging system, as shown in FIG. 9A, a multi-mode to single-mode splice, as shown in FIG. 9B, and a tapered section of multi-mode fiber, as illustrated in FIG. 9C.

(11) FIG. 10 is a schematic illustration of an alternative embodiment in which a fiber grating is used to predominantly reflect the fundamental mode of a multi-mode fiber.

(12) FIG. 11 is a schematic illustration of an alternative embodiment in which active or active-passive mode-locking is used to mode-lock the multi-mode laser.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT

(13) FIG. 1 illustrates the mode-locked laser cavity 11 of this invention which uses a length of multi-mode amplifying fiber 13 within the cavity to produce ultra-short, high-power optical pulses. As used herein, ultra-short means a pulse width below 100 ps. The fiber 13, in the example shown, is a 1.0 m length of non-birefringent Yb.sup.3+/Er.sup.3+-doped multi-mode fiber. Typically, a fiber is considered multi-mode when the V-value exceeds 2.41, i.e., when modes in addition to the fundamental mode can propagate in the optical fiber.

(14) This fiber is coiled onto a drum with a diameter of 5 cm, though bend diameters as small as 1.5 cm, or even smaller, may be used without inhibiting mode-locking. Due to the Er.sup.3+ doping, the fiber core in this example has an absorption of approximately 40 dB/m at a wavelength of 1.53 m. The Yb.sup.3+ co-doping produces an average absorption of 4.3 dB/m inside the cladding at a wavelength of 980 nm. The fiber 13 has a numerical aperture of 0.20 and a core diameter of 16 m. The outside diameter of the cladding of the fiber 13 is 200 m. The fiber 13 is coated with a low-index polymer producing a numerical aperture of 0.40 for the cladding. A 10 cm length of single-mode Corning Leaf fiber 15 is thermally tapered to produce a core diameter of approximately 14 m to ensure an optimum operation as a mode filter, and this length is fusion spliced onto a first end 17 of the multi-mode fiber 13.

(15) In this exemplary embodiment, the cavity 11 is formed between a first minor 19 and a second minor 21. It will be recognized that other cavity configurations for recirculating pulses are well known, and may be used. In this example, the mirrors 19, 21 define an optical axis 23 along which the cavity elements are aligned.

(16) The cavity 11 further includes a pair of Faraday rotators 25, 27 to compensate for linear phase drifts between the polarization eigenmodes of the fiber, thereby assuring that the cavity remains environmentally stable. As referenced herein, the phrase environmentally stable refers to a pulse source which is substantially immune to a loss of pulse generation due to environmental influences such as temperature drifts and which is, at most, only slightly sensitive to pressure variations. The use of Faraday Rotators for assuring environmental stability is explained in more detail in U.S. Pat. No. 5,689,519 which has been incorporated by reference herein.

(17) A polarization beam-splitter 29 on the axis 23 of the cavity 11 ensures single-polarization operation of the cavity 11, and provides the output 30 from the cavity. A half-wave plate 31 and a quarter-wave plate 33 are used to introduce linear phase delays within the cavity, providing polarization control to permit optimization of polarization evolution within the cavity 11 for mode-locking.

(18) To induce mode-locking, the cavity 11 is formed as a Fabry-Perot cavity by including a saturable absorber 35 at the end of the cavity proximate the mirror 19. The saturable absorber 35 is preferably grown as a 0.75 m thick layer of InGaAsP on one surface of a substrate. The band-edge of the InGaAsP saturable absorber 39 is preferably chosen to be 1.56 m, the carrier life-time is typically 5 ps and the saturation energy density is 100 MW/cm.sup.2.

(19) In this example, the substrate supporting the saturable absorber 35 comprises high-quality anti-reflection-coated InP 37, with the anti-reflection-coated surface 39 facing the open end of the cavity 11. The InP substrate is transparent to single-photon absorption of the signal light at 1.56 m, however two photon absorption occurs. This two-photon absorber 39 is used as a nonlinear power limiter to protect the saturable absorber 35.

(20) The mirror 19 in this exemplary embodiment is formed by depositing a gold-film onto the surface of the InGaAsP saturable absorber 35 opposite the two photon absorber 39. The combined structure of the saturable absorber 35, two photon absorber 37 and mirror 19 provides a reflectivity of 50% at 1.56 m. The surface of the gold-film mirror 19 opposite the saturable absorber 35 is attached to a sapphire window 41 for heat-sinking the combined absorber/mirror assembly.

(21) The laser beam from the fiber 15 is collimated by a lens 43 and refocused, after rotation by the Faraday rotator 25, by a lens 45 onto the anti-reflection-coated surface 39 of the two-photon absorber 37. The spot size of the laser beam on the saturable absorber 35 may be adjusted by varying the position of the lens 45 or by using lenses with different focal lengths. Other focusing lenses 47 and 49 in the cavity 11 aid in better imaging the laser signal onto the multi-mode fiber 13.

(22) Light from a Pump light source 51, such as a laser source, with a wavelength near 980 nm and output power of 5 W, is directed through a fiber bundle 57 with an outside diameter of 375 m. This pump light is injected into the end 53 of the multi-mode fiber 13 opposite the single-mode fiber 17. The pump light is coupled into the cavity 11 via a pump signal injector 55, such as a dichroic beam-splitter for 980/1550 nm. Lenses 47 and 48 are optimized for coupling of the pump power from the fiber bundle 57 into the cladding of the multi-mode fiber.

(23) The M.sup.2-value of the beam at the output 30 of this exemplary embodiment is typically approximately 1.2. Assuming the deterioration of the M.sup.2-value is mainly due to imperfect splicing between the multi-mode fiber 13 and the single-mode mode-filter fiber 15, it can be estimated that the single-mode mode-filter fiber 15 excited the fundamental mode of the multi-mode fiber 13 with an efficiency of approximately 90%.

(24) Mode-locking may be obtained by optimizing the focussing of the laser beam on the saturable absorber 35 and by optimizing the orientation of the intra-cavity waveplates 31, 33 to permit some degree of nonlinear polarization evolution. However, the mode-locked operation of a multi-mode fiber laser system without nonlinear polarization evolution can also be accomplished by minimizing the amount of mode-mixing in the multi-mode fiber 13 and by an optimization of the saturable absorber 35.

(25) The pulses which are generated by the exemplary embodiment of FIG. 1 will have a repetition rate of 66.7 MHz, with an average output power of 300 mW at a wavelength of 1.535 m, giving a pulse energy of 4.5 nJ. A typical autocorrelation of the pulses is shown in FIG. 2. A typical FWHM pulse width of 360 fsec (assuming a sech.sup.2 pulse shape) is generated. The corresponding pulse spectrum is shown in FIG. 3. The autocorrelation width is within a factor of 1.5 of the bandwidth limit as calculated from the pulse spectrum, which indicates the relatively high quality of the pulses.

(26) Due to the multi-mode structure of the oscillator, the pulse spectrum is strongly modulated and therefore the autocorrelation displays a significant amount of energy in a pulse pedestal. It can be estimated that the amount of energy in the pedestal is about 50%, which in turn gives a pulse peak power of 6 KW, about 6 times larger than what is typically obtained with single-mode fibers at a similar pulse repetition rate.

(27) Neglecting the amount of self-phase modulation in one pass through the multi-mode fiber 13 and any self-phase modulation in the mode-filter 15, and assuming a linear increase of pulse power in the multi-mode fiber 13 in the second pass, and assuming an effective fundamental mode area in the multi-mode fiber 13 of 133 m.sup.2, the nonlinear phase delay in the multi-mode oscillator is calculated from the first equation above as .sub.nl=1.45 7, which is close to the expected maximum typical nonlinear delay of passively mode-locked lasers.

(28) The modulation on the obtained pulse spectrum as well as the amount of generated pedestal is dependent on the alignment of the minor 21. Generally, optimized mode-matching of the optical beam back into the fundamental mode of the multi-mode fiber leads to the best laser stability and a reduction in the amount of pedestal and pulse spectrum modulation. For this reason, optimized pulse quality can be obtained by improving the splice between the single-mode filter fiber 15 and the multi-mode fiber 13. From simple overlap integrals it can be calculated that an optimum tapered section of Corning SMF-28 fiber 15 will lead to an excitation of the fundamental mode in the multi-mode fiber 13 with an efficiency of 99%. Thus any signal in higher-order modes can be reduced to about 1% in an optimized system.

(29) An alternate embodiment of the invention is illustrated in FIG. 4. As indicated by the identical elements and reference numbers, most of the cavity arrangement in this figure is identical to that shown in FIG. 1. This embodiment provides a highly integrated cavity 59 by employing a side-pumping mechanism for injecting pump light into the multi-mode fiber 13. A pair of fiber couplers 61, 63, as are well known in the art, inject light from a respective pair of fiber bundles 65 and 67 into the cladding of the multi-mode fiber 13. The fiber bundles are similar to bundle 57 shown in FIG. 1, and convey light from a pair of pump sources 69 and 71, respectively. Alternatively, the fiber bundles 65, 67 and couplers 61, 63 may be replaced with V-groove light injection into the multi-mode fiber cladding in a manner well known in the art. A saturable absorber 73 may comprise the elements 35, 37, 39 and 41 shown in FIG. 1, or may be of any other well known design, so long as it provides a high damage threshold.

(30) In another alternate embodiment of the invention, illustrated in FIG. 5, the laser cavity 75 includes a positive dispersion element. As with FIG. 4, like reference numbers in FIG. 5 identify elements described in detail with reference to FIG. 1. In this embodiment, a section of single-mode positive dispersion fiber 77 is mounted between the second mirror 21 and the lens 49. In a similar manner, a section of positive dispersion fiber could be spliced onto the end 53 of the multi-mode fiber 13, or the end of the single-mode mode-filter 15 facing the lens 43. Positive dispersion fibers typically have a small core area, and may limit the obtainable pulse energy from a laser. The embodiment shown in FIG. 5 serves to reduce the peak power injected into the positive dispersion fiber 77, and thus maximize the pulse energy output. This is accomplished by extracting, at the polarization beam splitter 29, as much as 90-99% of the light energy.

(31) In the embodiment of FIG. 5, the total dispersion inside the cavity may be adjusted to be zero to generate high-power pulses with a larger bandwidth. Alternatively, by adjusting the total cavity dispersion to be positive, chirped pulses with significantly increased pulse energies may be generated by the laser.

(32) The use of two single-mode mode-filter fibers 15, 77 is also beneficial in simplifying the alignment of the laser. Typically, to minimize modal speckle, broad bandwidth optical signals need to be used for aligning the mode-filter fibers with the multi-mode fiber. The use of two mode-filter fibers 15, 77 allows the use of amplified spontaneous emission signals generated directly in the multi-mode fiber for an iterative alignment of both mode-filters 15, 77.

(33) The chirped pulses generated in the cavity 75 with overall positive dispersion may be compressed down to approximately the bandwidth limit at the frequency doubled wavelength by employing chirped periodically poled LiNbO.sub.3 79 for sum-frequency generation, in a manner well known in the art. The chirped periodically poled LiNbO.sub.3 79 receives the cavity output from the polarization beam splitter 29 through an optical isolator 81. In this case, due to the high power capabilities of multi-mode fiber oscillators, higher frequency-doubling conversion efficiencies occur compared to those experienced with single-mode fiber oscillators. Alternatively, bulk-optics dispersion compensating elements may be used in place of the chirped periodically poled LiNbO.sub.3 79 for compressing the chirped pulses down to the bandwidth limit.

(34) Generally, any nonlinear optical mixing technique such as frequency doubling, Raman generation, four-wave mixing, etc. may be used in place of the chirped periodically poled LiNbO.sub.3 79 to frequency convert the output of the multi-mode oscillator fiber 13 to a different wavelength. Moreover, the conversion efficiency of these nonlinear optical mixing processes is generally proportional to the light intensity or light intensity squared. Thus, the small residual pedestal present in a multi-mode oscillator would be converted with greatly reduced efficiency compared to the central main pulse and hence much higher quality pulses may be obtained.

(35) As shown in the alternate embodiment of FIG. 6, very high-energy optical pulses may also be obtained by inserting a chirped fiber grating such as a Bragg grating 83, with negative dispersion, into the cavity 85. Such a system typically produces ps length, high-energy, approximately bandwidth-limited pulses. Due to the multi-mode fiber used, much greater peak powers compared to single-mode fiber oscillators are generated. Here the fiber grating 83 is inserted after the polarization beam splitter 29 to obtain an environmentally-stable cavity even in the presence of nonpolarization maintaining multi-mode fiber 13.

(36) In each of the embodiments of this invention, it is advantageous to minimize saturation of the multi-mode fiber amplifier 13 by amplified spontaneous emission generated in higher-order modes. This may be accomplished by confining the rare-earth doping centrally within a fraction of the core diameter.

(37) Polarization-maintaining multi-mode optical fiber may be constructed by using an elliptical fiber core or by attaching stress-producing regions to the multi-mode fiber cladding. Examples of such fiber cross-sections are shown in FIGS. 7A and 7B, respectively. Polarization-maintaining multi-mode fiber allows the construction of environmentally stable cavities in the absence of Faraday rotators. An example of such a design is shown in FIG. 8 in this case, the output of the cavity 87 is provided by using a partially-reflecting mirror 89 at one end of the cavity 87, in a manner well known in this art.

(38) To ensure optimum matching of the fundamental mode of the multi-mode fiber 13 to the mode of the single-mode mode-filter fiber 15 in each of the embodiments of this invention, either a bulk optic imaging system, a splice between the multi-mode fiber 13 and the single-mode fiber 15, or a tapered section of the multi-mode fiber 13 may be used. For example, the multi-mode fiber 13, either in the form shown in one for FIG. 7A and FIG. 7B or in a non-polarization maintaining form may be tapered to an outside diameter of 70 m. This produces an inside core diameter of 5.6 m and ensures single mode operation of the multi-mode fiber at the tapered end. By further employing an adiabatic taper, the single-mode of the multi-mode fiber may be excited with nearly 100% efficiency. A graphic representation of the three discussed methods for excitation of the fundamental mode in an multi-mode fiber 13 with a single-mode fiber mode-filter 15 is shown in FIGS. 9A, 9B and 9C, respectively. The implementation in a cavity design is not shown separately, but the splice between the single-mode fiber 15 and the multi-mode fiber 15 shown in any of the disclosed embodiments may be constructed with any of the three alternatives shown in these figures.

(39) FIG. 10 shows an additional embodiment of the invention. Here, instead of single-mode mode-filter fibers 15 as used in the previous embodiments, fiber gratings such as a Bragg grating directly written into the multi-mode fiber 13 is used to predominantly reflect the fundamental mode of the multi-mode fiber 13. Light from the pump 51 is injected through the fiber grating 97 to facilitate a particularly simple cavity design 99. Both chirped fiber gratings 97 as well as unchirped gratings can be implemented. Narrow bandwidth (chirped or unchirped) gratings favor the oscillation of pulses with a bandwidth smaller than the grating bandwidth.

(40) Finally, instead of passive mode-locking, active mode-locking or active-passive mode-locking techniques may be used to mode-lock multi-mode fibers. For example, an active-passive mode-locked system could comprise an optical frequency or amplitude modulator (as the active mode-locking mechanism) in conjunction with nonlinear polarization evolution (as the passive mode-locking mechanism) to produce short optical pulses at a fixed repetition rate without a saturable absorber. A diagram of a mode-locked multi-mode fiber 13 with an optical mode-locking mechanism 101 is shown in FIG. 11. Also shown is an optical filter 103, which can be used to enhance the performance of the mode-locked laser 105.

(41) Generally, the cavity designs described herein are exemplary of the preferred embodiments of this invention. Other variations are obvious from the previous discussions. In particular, optical modulators, optical filters, saturable absorbers and a polarization control elements are conveniently inserted at either cavity end. Equally, output coupling can be extracted at an optical mirror, a polarization beam splitter or also from an optical fiber coupler attached to the single-mode fiber filter 15. The pump power may also be coupled into the multi-mode fiber 13 from either end of the multi-mode fiber 13 or through the side of the multi-mode fiber 13 in any of the cavity configurations discussed. Equally, all the discussed cavities may be operated with any amount of dispersion. Chirped and unchirped gratings may be implemented at either cavity end to act as optical filters and also to modify the dispersion characteristics of the cavity.