Femtosecond Red and Near-Infrared Lasers Due to Cascaded-Raman-Assisted Four-Wave Mixing in a Nonlinear Yb-Doped Fiber Amplifier

We demonstrated a straightforward approach to generate red and near-infrared laser emissions by a Raman-assisted four wave mixing (FWM) process in a nonlinear Yb-doped fiber amplifier, delivering 342 fs pulses of 241 nJ at 864 nm, 834 fs pulses of 21 nJ at 751 nm, and 1.9 ps pulses of 3.8 &mu
J at 1030 nm. A pair of gratings was employed as the pre-compressor to promote the intensity of the fundamental wave in the main amplifier. Multiple wavelengths from 751 to 1273 nm resulted due to cascaded-Raman-assisted FWM. The pre-compression also underlay the achievement of 25.1, 701, and 2000 kW peak power for the red (751 nm), near-infrared (864 nm), and fundamental (1030 nm) components respectively, which restrained the gain narrowing effect during the amplification. It finally led to shorter pulse duration under increased power.