145 W single-frequency fiber laser at 1607 nm with the seed and MOPA configuration

In this paper, high Er³⁺ concentration erbium doped fiber (EDF) and erbium-ytterbium co-doped fiber (EYDF) were fabricated for the seed and master oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) system of the single-frequency fiber laser. An in-band pumping source with the wavelength of 1535 nm was proposed to improve the efficiency in the ring-cavity. A slope efficiency of 23.8% with an output power of 49 mW was achieved and the laser linewidth was measured to be 800 Hz. In the MOPA system, a piece of EYDF was used firstly to absorb the backward 1 µm amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) and amplified the signal from the seed. Based on the above methods, an output power of 145 W was achieved at 1607.75 nm. Because of the self-phase modulation, the laser linewidth was expanded to be 10.75 kHz at the output power of 132 W. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest efficiency and output power of the seed and the highest output power of the 1.6 µm single-frequency fiber laser.