Self-pulsing Dynamics in Yb-doped Fiber Lasers

There is worldwide considerable interest in the study and development of high-power Yb-doped continuous wave (CW) and pulsed fiber lasers for various material processing applications. Although it appears to be trivial to generate high-power CW output from Yb-doped CW fiber lasers by pumping with high-power CW laser diodes; however, it is not so easy to generate truly CW output without amplitude modulations due to self-pulsing phenomenon. The observation of random self-pulses overriding CW output has been reported by several authors. These random self-pulses may have very high peak power to cause catastrophic damage of fiber laser components and thereby inhibit generation of high-power CW output. This chapter describes self-pulsing dynamics and its elimination in different Yb-doped CW fiber laser configurations.