All Passive, High Efficiency Cascaded Raman Fiber Lasers

V BALASWAMY, S ARUN, G CHAYRAN AND V R SUPRADEEPA*

Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru 560012, India
*Corresponding author: supradeepa@cense.iisc.ernet.in

Abstract: We demonstrate a new, high-efficiency cascaded Raman fiber laser utilizing a fully
passive architecture. Here, we demonstrate Raman conversion from 1117nm to 1480nm with an
output power of ~64 W and efficiency of 60 %.
OCIS codes: (060.2320) Fiber optics amplifiers and oscillators; (060.4370) Nonlinear optics, fibers; (140.3550) Lasers,
Raman

1. Introduction
High power fiber lasers have been of high commercial interest mainly due to their applications in the fields of
material processing, defense and communications. This has lead to a substantial power scaling of fiber lasers over
the last decade [1]. However, power scaling has been largely confined to Ytterbium (Yb) emission window (1050
nm to 1100 nm) due to its inherent material advantages. At other wavelengths, fiber lasers are either limited in
power or no suitable technology is available [1]. High power, single mode 1.5 µm fiber lasers are attractive due to
their eye safety and enhanced atmospheric transmission properties. The standard method of generating high powers
at 1.5 µm is by using EY codoped fiber pumped at 975 nm (where mature, low cost diode technology is available).
But, power scaling is limited due to large quantum defect between pump and signal wavelengths, which enhances
thermal load, and also due to parasitic lasing of Yb ions at high powers. Using the standard method, the highest
power demonstrated was 297 W [2] for a total pump power of 1.2 kW. The slope efficiency was < 20 % at
maximum power due to parasitic lasing of Yb ions. Since then, there is no further improvement in the output power.
On the other hand, with Yb-free Er-doped fibers, power scaling is again limited by enhanced thermal load (large
quantum defect) if 980 nm pumping is used [3] or by the lack of efficient and cost-effective pump sources, if in-
band pumping is used [4].
Cascaded Raman fiber lasers offer a scalable solution, to generate high powers at 1.5 µm and also at a variety of
other wavelengths [5]. Here, the input pump laser (Yb-doped fiber laser in this case) is wavelength converted to the
required wavelength using a series of Raman shifts as shown in Fig 1. In addition to conventional high power laser
applications, Raman lasers at 14xxnm have also found extensive use as high brightness, low quantum defect pump
sources for in-band pumping of Erbium doped media [6-8]. This is particularly attractive for single frequency and
short pulse Erbium fiber amplifiers, where the nonlinearity is significantly reduced due to short fiber lengths made
possible by high brightness pumping.

Fig 1: Principle of cascaded Raman conversion

Conventional Raman lasers use a cascaded Raman resonator for Raman conversion [9]. A cascaded Raman
resonator consists of a series of nested cavities at each of the intermediate stokes wavelengths comprising high-
reflectivity fiber Bragg gratings and high-nonlinearity Raman fiber. These lasers are limited in conversion
efficiencies due to excess losses associated with the resonator assembly. Also they are not reliable as far as stability
is concerned [10]. Using this architecture, over 100 W of output power was achieved [9], but limited in conversion
efficiencies to ~48 % (for a quantum limited efficiency of ~75 %). Therefore, it was essential to scale the conversion
efficiencies and reduce the system complexity to make cascaded Raman lasers a competitive technology. Recently, a
new, high efficiency architecture was proposed in [11]. It was based on a single pass cascaded Raman amplifier,
seeded at all intermediate stokes wavelengths and was demonstrated with a record output power of 301W and power
conversion efficiency from 1117 nm to 1480 of 64 % [12]. However, in this architecture, to generate the
intermediate stokes wavelengths, a complete cascaded Raman laser is needed. This necessitates an additional
intermediate power Yb laser and associated optics, increasing the overall complexity of the system. Therefore, it is
strongly desired to develop a simple, compact and cost effective system which combines both the properties (high
conversion efficiency, reliability of high efficiency architecture [11, 12] and a simple, low complexity architecture
of conventional Raman laser [9]).
In this work, we propose for the first time, such a simple, all-passive architecture for high efficiency cascaded
Raman conversion. We demonstrate this with a high-power, fifth-order cascaded Raman converter from 1117 nm to
1480 nm with output power of 64 W and conversion efficiency of ~60 %.
2. Experimental setup

Fig 3: Schematic of the new multi-wavelength seeded cascaded Raman amplifier, RIG, ROG – Raman input and
output grating sets, WDM – Wavelength division multiplexer.

Fig 3 shows the schematic of the proposed architecture. Here, the goal of the system is to tap out the necessary
fraction of power from the high power fiber laser and use it to generate the intermediate stokes wavelengths. In this
way, the need of intermediate power Yb doped fiber laser in [11, 12] is eliminated to generate intermediate stokes
seed wavelengths. We used a home built, high power Yb doped fiber laser as a pump source which provides ~107 W
at 1117 nm and a conventional cascaded Raman resonator to generate intermediate stokes wavelengths. The newly
generated stokes wavelengths in cascaded Raman resonator need to be efficiently coupled back with the high power
laser source for cascaded Raman conversion. This necessitates a device which can tap out a small fraction of power
from the high power fiber laser source while also efficiently coupling back, the newly generated stokes wavelengths.
Such a functionality can be achieved with a fused fiber wavelength division multiplexer (WDM) which can operate
at high power. However, owing to the small power tapped out, the hit on the efficiency is not substantial. We
utilized an 1117/1480 nm WDM with an isolation of ~15 dB between 1117-1480 ports. This enables sufficient
power tapped out to drive the cascaded Raman conversion and also, the WDM nature enables efficient recoupling of
generated intermediate stokes wavelengths. We further observed the additional benefit from gratings used in
cascaded Raman resonator which recoupled a substantial fraction of backward Raman components generated in the
amplifier as shown in the Fig 3. A Raman filter fiber [10] was used to achieve cascaded Raman conversion which
prevented further Raman conversion of the final stokes wavelength (1480 nm).
3. Results
Fig 4(a) shows the total output power and the power in 1480 nm component as a function of input power at 1117
nm. In the experiment, input pump source was a single stage Yb doped fiber laser at 1117 nm with an optical
conversion efficiency of ~75 %. Three 50 W pump laser diodes at 975 nm were used for Yb-doped fiber laser. We
measured an output power of ~64 W at 1480 nm for an input power of ~107 W at 1117 nm. The power at 1480 nm
was limited by available input pump power and the total conversion efficiency of ~60 % was achieved (for a
quantum limited efficiency from 1117 nm to 1480 nm of ~75 %). The total optical to optical efficiency from 975 nm
to 1480 nm was ~45 %. This is substantially higher than any alternative technology at these power levels such as
cladding pumped EY fiber lasers.
Fig 4(b) shows the measured output spectrum at full power in linear scale and log scale (inset). Approximately
95 % of the power was in 1480 nm band indicating a high level of wavelength conversion and also high suppression
of the next stokes order at 1590 nm is maintained through the use of filter fiber. The losses due to WDM coupler,
splices, and the residual power in the other stokes components are responsible for reduction in efficiency below
quantum limit. The conversion efficiency at lower powers is lower by the necessity of longer length of Raman fiber.
We anticipate the conversion efficiency to increase further as we scale the output power.

Fig 4: (a) Plot of total output power and output power at 1480 nm as a function of input power at 1117 nm (b)
Spectrum of the output in linear scale and log scale (inset) at maximum power.

4. Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank Jeffrey W. Nicholson from OFS laboratories for helpful discussions and OFS for
providing the Raman and fiber laser grating sets.

5. References

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