Ytterbium fibre laser with a heavily Yb3+-doped glass fibre core

The use of optical fibres with a high concentration of active ions in the fibre core allows the reduction of the active fibre length and the increase in the threshold powers of various nonlinear effects in the fibre, thereby increasing the maximum output power of fibre lasers. For this purpose, we manufactured a highly concentrated ytterbium-doped (∼1.0x1021cm-3) phosphate glass for the active fibre core and a pure glass of a similar composition for the fibre cladding. A single-mode fibre is fabricated from these glasses and generation is obtained in an ytterbium laser based on this fibre with the slope efficiency of no less than 60% at a wavelength of 975 nm. (letters)