10 W CW ytterbium-doped fiber laser with 4 × 1 fused fiber bundle combiner

Abstract

An ytterbium-doped double-clad fiber laser with one-end pumped by four 915 nm laser diodes (LDs) combined by a homemade multimode fused fiber bundle combiner is proposed. The combiner, fused by splicing four fiber pigtails from diodes, exhibits a good capability of low-loss and a high efficiency of 92.7%. The fiber laser, which can generate a continuous-wave (CW) up to 10.3 W output power at 1104 nm with a homemade D-shape inner cladding ytterbium-doped fiber, is demonstrated. The slope efficiency is about 65% and the optical-to-optical conversion efficiency with respect to the pump power is 46% at its maximum output laser power.