A high-energy cladding-pumped 80 nanosecond Q-switched fiber laser using a tapered fiber saturable absorber

We report a passively Q-switched all-fiber laser using a large mode area (LMA) Yb³⁺-doped fiber cladding-pumped at 915 nm and an unpumped single-mode Yb³⁺-doped fiber as the saturable absorber (SA). The saturable absorber and gain fibers were first coupled with a free-space telescope to better study the composite system, and then fusion spliced with fiber tapers to match the mode field diameters. ASE generated in the LMA gain fiber preferentially bleaches the SA fiber before depleting the gain, thereby causing the SA fiber to act as a passive saturable absorber. Using this scheme we first demonstrate a Q-switched oscillator with 40 μJ 79 ns pulses at 1026 nm using a free-space taper, and show that pulses can be generated from 1020 nm to 1040 nm. We scale the pulse energy to 0.40 mJ using an Yb³⁺-doped cladding pumped fiber amplifier. Experimental studies in which the saturable absorber length, pump times, and wavelengths are independently varied reveal the impact of these parameters on laser performance. Finally, we demonstrate 60 μJ 81 ns pulses at 1030 nm in an all fiber architecture using tapered mode field adaptors to match the mode filed diameters of the gain and SA fibers.