Multimegawatt peak-power, single-transverse-mode operation of a 100 μm core diameter, Yb-doped rodlike photonic crystal fiber amplifier

The authors report on the performance of an Yb-doped, 100 mu m core rodlike photonic crystal fiber (PCF) used as the final amplifier in a gain-staged master-oscillator/power-amplifier source. From the PCF, they obtained 1-ns-long pulses of energy in excess of 4.3 mJ, peak/average power similar to 4.5 MW/42 W, and spectral linewidth similar to 20 GHz. The PCF emitted a beam exhibiting near-Gaussian, single-transverse-mode profile of M-2 similar to 1.3. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.