3.6 W compact all-fiber Pr3+-doped green laser at 521 nm

Abstract

Abstract. Green semiconductor lasers are still undeveloped, so high-power green lasers have heavily relied on nonlinear frequency conversion of near-infrared lasers, precluding compact and low-cost green laser systems. Here, we report the first Watt-level all-fiber CW Pr3  +  -doped laser operating directly in the green spectral region, addressing the aforementioned difficulties. The compact all-fiber laser consists of a double-clad Pr3  +  -doped fluoride fiber, two homemade fiber dichroic mirrors at visible wavelengths, and a 443-nm fiber-pigtailed pump source. Benefitting from   >  10  MW  /  cm2 high damage intensity of our designed fiber dielectric mirror, the green laser can stably deliver 3.62-W of continuous-wave power at   ∼  521  nm with a slope efficiency of 20.9%. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest output power directly from green fiber lasers, which is one order higher than previously reported. Moreover, these green all-fiber laser designs are optimized by using experiments and numerical simulations. Numerical results are in excellent agreement with our experimental results and show that the optimal gain fiber length, output mirror reflectivity, and doping level should be considered to obtain higher power and efficiency. This work may pave a path toward compact high-power green all-fiber lasers for applications in biomedicine, laser display, underwater detection, and spectroscopy.