Output performance of Nd-doped double-clad fiber laser

Abstract

High-power fiber lasers have been actively studied in many groups to get compact and comprehensive sources instead of CW Nd-doped crystal lasers for many applications. The high-power fiber lasers have many advantages including very high efficiency with respect to incident pump power, immunity from thermal lensing due to large ratio of surface area to volume, no need of beam steering, simplicity of optical cavity construction, and inherently fiber-coupled output. Analysis on the output performance is needed in order to consider the loss and non-uniform pumping along the fiber. We present the results of numerical analysis for the high-power double-clad fiber lasers including dependence on output mirror reflectivity, two-end pump, absorbed pump power, and fiber loss. Also distribution of output power along the fiber length was presented.