Theoretical study of pump power distribution on modal instabilities in high power fiber amplifiers

Influence of pump power distribution on modal instabilities (MI) is studied numerically, which reveals that the MI threshold is dependent on the pump power distribution in fiber amplifiers and can be increased by optimizing the pump power distribution without any adjustment of other amplifier parameters. It shows that amplifiers with backward or bi-direction pump schemes have a higher threshold than those employing forward pump schemes. For backward pumped amplifiers employing fiber with core/clad diameter being 20/400 mu m, the MI threshold yields a 42% increase compared to the forward pumped ones. For bi-direction pumped amplifiers, there exists an optimal power ratio between forward and backward pump power, which results in the highest threshold power. When amplifiers with core/clad diameter being 20/400 mu m employ a bi-direction pump scheme at the optimal backward pump power fraction, the threshold can be increased by a factor of approximately 60% with respect to the forward pump configuration. The threshold increment factor reduces as the gain saturation effect weakens. It also shows that the MI threshold can be increased by employing multi-point side pump schemes.