Research progress on high-performance single-frequency fiber lasers: 2017-2021 (Invited)
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摘要: 单频光纤激光器以其独特的窄线宽、低噪声的激光特性,结合光纤系统高光束质量、高集成性以及免维护等应用优势,在冷原子物理、高分辨光谱分析、引力波探测以及远距离相干通信等前沿科学研究和应用领域具有广泛前景。伴随着光纤激光技术的快速发展,单频光纤激光器的性能在过去的二十年间得到了长足进步,单频光纤激光技术的基本体系逐渐建立。近年来,研究人员围绕高性能单频光纤激光器开展了一系列创新工作,在探索单频光纤激光的新机制、新结构,提升单频激光功率、压缩线宽、抑制噪声以及拓展工作波段等方面取得了不俗的研究成果。为此,笔者系统总结分析了近五年来高性能单频光纤激光器的研究进展,及时捕捉当前单频光纤激光领域研究趋势及所面临的新的发展瓶颈,并对单频光纤激光技术在新阶段的发展方向进行了展望。Abstract: Single-frequency fiber lasers have attracted extensive attention due to distinctive laser properties on narrow linewidth, low noise, as well as preferred all-fiber structure with good beam quality, high compactness and free of maintenance, which can find widespread applications from advanced scientific research to practical applications including cold atom physics, high resolution spectroscopy, gravitational wave detection, long-distance coherent communications, and so on. Along with the rapid development of fiber laser technique, the performance of single-frequency fiber laser has been improved significantly in the last two decades and the related basic techniques have been built up systematically. Recently, a series of creative research works have been demonstrated in the area of high-performance single-frequency fiber lasers, where impressive progress has been made on newly developed mechanism and structure for single-frequency laser generation, performance improvement on laser power increment, linewidth narrowing, noise suppression as well as operation wavelength extension. Therefore, the research progress on high-performance single-frequency fiber lasers in recent five years was reviewed to reveal current trend in this area as well as the new bottleneck so as to point out the prospect on possible development routine in near future.
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图 2 Yb:YAG晶体衍生石英光纤拉制示意图;预制棒纤芯材料为YAG晶体,包层材料为石英玻璃;(1)、(2)分别为晶体衍生光纤的侧面图和截面图[19]
Figure 2. Schematic diagram of Yb3+-doped crystal-derived silica fiber fabrication using the preform with a YAG crystal core and a silica cladding, where the insets are the optical images of the (1) side view and (2) cross-sectional view of the crystal-derived silica fiber[19]
图 6 (a) 基于掺铥-布里渊复合增益的2 µm窄线宽单频光纤激光器实验装置图;(b) 单频激光功率输出曲线,插图:基于延迟自外差法测得的斯托克斯光线宽[26]
Figure 6. (a) Experimental setup of the 2 µm narrow-linewidth single-frequency Brillouin-Thulium-based fiber laser; (b) Curves of single-frequency laser output power; Inset: Measured Stokes linewidth based on delayed self-heterodyne method[26]
图 7 (a) 基于半导体光放大器与自注入锁定技术的单频光纤激光器全光噪声抑制实验装置图;(b)单频激光在自由运转以及半导体光放大器和自注入锁定技术应用下噪声特性对比图[31]
Figure 7. (a) Experimental setup of the low-noise single-frequency fiber laser based on booster optical amplifier (BOA) and self-injection locking (SIL) techniques; (b) Comparison on laser noise of the single-frequency laser under free-running status, and noise control status with BOA and SIL techniques[31]
图 10 (a) 基于复合泵浦和级联光纤技术的单频掺镱光纤放大系统装置图;(b) 976 nm单独泵浦以及976 nm和915 nm复合泵浦下单频放大输出功率;(c) 单频激光功率为435 W时的光束质量[49]
Figure 10. (a) Experimental setup of the single-frequency all-fiber amplifier based on hybrid pump of the cascaded Yb3+-doped fibers; (b) Laser output power of the main amplifier stage under singular 976 nm pump, and 976 nm and 915 nm hybrid pump; (c) Measured beam quality of the single-frequency amplifier at the output power of 435 W[49]
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