Functional Fibers and Functional Fiber-Based Components for High-Power Lasers

Abstract The success of high-power fiber lasers is fueled by maturation of active and passive fibers, combined with the availability of high-power fiber-based components. In this contribution, we first overview the enormous potential of rare-earth doped fibers in spectral coverage and recent developments of key fiber-based components employed in high-power laser systems. Subsequently, the emerging functional active and passive fibers in recent years, which exhibit tremendous advantages in balancing or mitigating parasitic nonlinearities hindering high-power transmission, are outlined from the perspectives of geometric and material engineering. Finally, novel functional applications of conventional fiber-based components for nonlinear suppression or spatial mode selection, and correspondingly, the high-power progress of function fiber-based components in power handling are introduced, which suggest more flexible controllability on high-power laser operations. Graphical abstract