High pulse energy and quantum efficiency mid-infrared gas Raman fiber laser targeting CO<sub>2</sub> absorption at 4.2 µm
Yazhou Wang, Manoj K. Dasa, Abubakar I. Adamu, José Enrique Antonio-Lopez, Md. Selim Habib, Rodrigo Amezcua‐Correa, Ole Bang, Christos Markos
Abstract
In this Letter, we demonstrate a high pulse energy and linearly polarized mid-infrared Raman fiber laser targeting the strongest absorption line of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:msub> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">C</mml:mi> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">O</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:msub> </mml:math> at <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:mo>∼</mml:mo> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mn>4.2</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mspace width="thickmathspace"/> <mml:mtext>µ</mml:mtext> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">m</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . This laser was generated from a hydrogen ( <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:msub> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">H</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:msub> </mml:math> )-filled antiresonant hollow-core fiber, pumped by a custom-made 1532.8 nm Er-doped fiber laser delivering 6.9 ns pulses and 11.6 kW peak power. A quantum efficiency as high as 74% was achieved, to yield 17.6 µJ pulse energy at 4.22 µm. Less than 20 bar <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <mml:msub> <mml:mrow class="MJX-TeXAtom-ORD"> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">H</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:msub> </mml:math> pressure was required to maximize the pulse energy since the transient Raman regime was efficiently suppressed by the long pump pulses.