Production of high power ytterbium doped fiber laser

Fiber laser has a wide application range, such as medical applications, industry, defense and scientific purposes, thanks to their good beam quality, low production and maintenance cost. Furthermore, fiber lasers are not affected by environmental conditions like temperature, humidity, perturbation and so on. Although lower power levels (mW) are enough for medical and scientific purposes, defense and industrial applications require kW range optical power. This situation has led to increasing demand increasing the power scale that can be achieved with fiber lasers day by day. The aim of this study is to produce an all-fiber, continuous wave, 1 kW Ytterbium doped fiber laser. 36 pieces pump diodes, which have 915nm wavelength and 40 W output power, were used during the production process. Ytterbium doped 20/400m active fiber was used as active medium. The total pump power and output power of the fiber laser was measured as 1440 W and 1010 W, respectively. The slope efficiency of the system is about %70 and the wavelength is 1070 nm. The output power of the system is limited by the handling capacity of the pump combiner. It is believed that when higher power level combiners will be available, the higher power fiber lasers can be produced without neither thermal nor optical problems.