Nonlinear fibre-optic devices pumped by semiconductor disk lasers

Semiconductor disk lasers offer a unique combination of characteristics that are particularly attractive for pumping Raman lasers and amplifiers. The advantages of disk lasers include a low relative noise intensity (-150 dB Hz-1), scalable (on the order of several watts) output power, and nearly diffraction-limited beam quality resulting in a high (∼70 % — 90 %) coupling efficiency into a single-mode fibre. Using this technology, low-noise fibre Raman amplifiers operating at 1.3 μm in co-propagation configuration are developed. A hybrid Raman-bismuth doped fibre amplifier is proposed to further increase the pump conversion efficiency. The possibility of fabricating mode-locked picosecond fibre lasers operating under both normal and anomalous dispersion is shown experimentally. We demonstrate the operation of 1.38-μm and 1.6-μm passively mode-locked Raman fibre lasers pumped by 1.29-μm and 1.48-μm semiconductor disk lasers and producing 1.97- and 2.7-ps pulses, respectively. Using a picosecond semiconductor disk laser amplified with an ytterbium-erbium fibre amplifier, the supercontinuum generation spanning from 1.35 μm to 2 μm is achieved with an average power of 3.5 W. (invited paper)