High energy, high average and peak power Phosphate-Glass fiber amplifiers for 1micron band

Heavy doping of common silica gain fibers is not practical; therefore long fibers are required for efficient amplification (usually 5-10m). This is undesirable due to nonlinearities that grow with fiber length. In contrast, NP Photonics phosphate-glass based fibers can be heavily doped without any side-effects, and hence can provide very high gain in short lengths (less than 0.5m). This enables an ideal pulsed fiber amplifier for a MOPA system that maximizes the energy extraction and minimizes the nonlinearities. We demonstrate 1W average power, 200 mu J energy, and >10kW peak power from a SBS-limited all-fiber MOPA system at 1550nm, and 32W average power, 90 mu J energy, and 45kW peak power from a SRS and SPM limited all-fiber MOPA system at 1064 nm. These results were limited by the seed and pump sources.