2 W, 1.5 µm single-mode fiber methane Raman laser pumped by a Yb-doped fiber amplifier

Abstract

We report here, to the best of our knowledge, the first 1.5 µm methane-filled fiber Raman laser pumped by a fiber laser. Based on the narrow-linewidth pulsed Yb-doped fiber laser pump source and a 15 m hollow-core fiber filled with 2.5 bar methane, the maximum power of 2.06 W Stokes wave at 1543 nm is obtained. The output laser has a narrow linewidth of 2.3 GHz, and the pulse repetition frequency can be adjusted flexibly. The output shows excellent near-diffraction-limited beam quality with a M2 factor of ∼1.09. This work proves the advantage of the fiber laser pump source with modest peak power and flexible temporal characteristics in 1.5 µm fiber gas Raman laser emission, providing good guidance for generating pulsed fiber source with narrow linewidth and high beam quality.