20 W splice-free erbium-doped all-fiber laser operating at 1610 nm.

We report on a splice-free erbium-doped all-fiber laser emitting over 20 W at a wavelength of 1610 nm, with a slope efficiency of 19.6 % and an overall efficiency of 18.3% with respect to the launched pump power at 976 nm. The simple cavity design takes advantage of fiber Bragg gratings written directly in the gain fiber through the polymer coating and clad-pumping from a single commercial pump diode to largely simplify the assembling process, making this cavity ideal for large-scale commercial deployment. Two single-mode and singly erbium-doped silica fibers were fabricated in-house: the first to assess the effects of a high erbium concentration (0.36 mol.% Er2O3), yielding a low efficiency of 2.5 % with respect to launched pump power, and the second to achieve the improved result mentioned above (0.03 mol.% Er2O3). Numerical simulations show the link between the performance of each cavity and ion pair-induced quenching. (C) 2018 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement