Investigation of a Pulsed 1550 nm Fiber Laser System

There is a strong need for a pulsed laser system at eye safe wavelengths for illuminator applications. High power pulsed 1550 nm fiber lasers systems are able to generate, shaped, pulses at various repetition rates and as such, may be useful for seeding a high power solid state amplifier stage. An electro-optic modulator as well as amplified spontaneous emission filters were used to enable pulses with high contrast relative to the power between pulses. Pulse energies of approximately 0.3 mJ with a PER of 15 dB and an M2 of 1.12 were obtained from the four stage pulsed fiber laser system. This result is superior to comparable results in the scientific literature. It is expected that seeding of a fifth and final stage in 60 micron core fiber with the output of this four stage laser will result in output energy levels of 3-5 mJpulse.