High-beam-quality signal and pump combiner with large-mode-area fiber for high-power fiber laser and amplifier

We investigate a high-beam-quality (6 + 1) x 1 signal and pump combiner with 50 mu m core diameter of the output fiber based on the tapered-fused fiber bundle technique for the first time. The influence of taper ratio of the taper bundle for different mode proportions of the output fiber and the transition efficiency of the signal light are analyzed numerically. In the experiment, a signal fiber core diameter matching from 10 to 50 mu m in the combiner is achieved. We experimentally demonstrate that the total 1018 nm pump efficiency of the combiner is >98% and the signal light insertion loss is less than 2%, with a beam quality factor M-2 of 1.59. Also, we have set up an amplifier based on the combiner, whose output laser power can achieve 2340 W with the slope efficiency of 73.76%. The beam quality factor M-2 of the output laser is 2.83 at the maximum power output, and a high beam quality is maintained when a large-mode-area fiber is employed in the laser system. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America