Shaping of nanosecond pulses in ytterbium fiber lasers by synchronous sine-wave pump modulation

In this work, we discovered the possibility of greatly relaxing requirements to the speed and dynamic range of pump power variation and, thus, of reducing synchronous pumping of ytterbium (Yb)-based fiber lasers to a very simple pump modulation yielding a mode-locked pulsed output. We show that even slow (microsecond-scale) low-index (<= 0.5) sine-wave synchronous modulation of the pump power can result in shaping of a regular train of nanosecond laser pulses. It is revealed that the energy-conservative process of laser pulse shortening against the pump modulation period can take place in the quasi-two-level laser active medium owing to mistiming-induced gain discrimination of the temporal laser pulse profile. Thus, nanosecond pulses with energy up to 50 nJ were obtained in our experimental all-fiber Yb-based laser configuration. Our theoretical modeling reveals routes to much stronger pulse shortening through tunable pump modulation parameters. This discovery allows the establishment of more reliable and easy-to-implement high-efficiency alternatives to other types of high-energy ultralong mode-locked fiber lasers. (C) 2020 Optical Society of America