Double-clad Fiber - Fiber For Amplifiers and Fiber Lasers

Fiber For Amplifiers and Fiber Lasers

In modern double-clad fibers for high power fiber amplifiers and lasers, the inner cladding has a higher refractive index than the outer cladding. This enables the inner cladding to guide light by total internal reflection in the same way the core does, but for a different range of wavelengths. This allows diode lasers, which have high power but low brightness, to be used as the optical pump source. The pump light can be easily coupled into the large inner cladding, and propagates through the inner cladding while the signal propagates in the smaller core. The doped core gradually absorbs the cladding light as it propagates, driving the amplification process. This pumping scheme is often called cladding pumping, which is an alternative to the conventional core pumping, in which the pump light is coupled into the small core. The invention of cladding pumping by a Polaroid fiber research team (H. Po, et al.) revolutionized the design of fiber amplifiers and lasers. Using this method, modern fiber lasers can produce continuous power up to several kilowatts, while the signal light in the core maintains near diffraction-limited beam quality.

The shape of the cladding is very important, especially when the core diameter is small compared to the size of the inner cladding. Circular symmetry in a double-clad fiber seems to be the worst solution for a fiber laser; in this case, many modes of the light in the cladding miss the core and hence cannot be used to pump it. In the language of geometrical optics, most of the rays of the pump light do not pass through the core, and hence cannot pump it. Ray tracing, simulations of the paraxial propagation and mode analysis give similar results.