Invited Paper: Polarization maintaining large mode area Yb fibers for all fiber nanosecond pulse amplification

Polarization maintaining (PM), all-fiber amplifiers offer the benefits of alignment free and environmentally stable operation. To achieve high output powers, particularly in pulsed operation, it is necessary to balance the need to reduce deleterious nonlinear effects, often through the use of large mode area (LMA) fibers, with the onset of transverse mode instability whereby higher order modes (HOMs) mix with the desired fundamental mode output. Over the last few years, advances in high HOM loss, ytterbium-doped LMA fibers have enabled continuous wave (CW) output powers up to 5 kW and pulse energies up to 2 mJ in non-PM fibers. In CW operation, LMA PM fibers have shown up to 2 kW of average power. In this contribution, we present all-fiber nanosecond pulsed amplification in a high HOM loss, Yb-doped LMA fiber with a 26 μ m mode field diameter and 2.4 dB/m of pump absorption at 976 nm, achieving 1 mJ of pulse energy at 1 kW of average power, and 1.5 mJ of pulse energy at 750 W of average power. The polarization extinction ratios were 20 dB or higher and the M 2 was near the diffraction limit. We measured the in-pulse to out-of-pulse energy and found 99.9% or more of the measured power remained in-pulse. • New high higher order mode loss, large mode area fibers support high pulse energies. • Unique combination of high average power and millijoule plus pulse energy. • Polarization maintaining fiber for applications needing environmental stability. • Pulsed amplification in an all-fiber system with diffraction-limited beam quality. • Careful characterization shows high percentage of in-pulse energy.