300 W-level, wavelength-widely-tunable, all-fiber integrated thulium-doped fiber laser

A high-power, wavelength-tunable, all-fiber integrated thulium-doped fiber laser (TDFL) at 2 μm is presented. The TDFL has a compact configuration which only consists of a low power seed oscillator and a stage of fiber power amplifier. The seed oscillator adopts a tunable band-pass filter as the wavelength selective element, matching the gain spectrum of thulium-doped fiber. It can provide ~5 W single-mode seed laser with superb spectral characteristics, and the lasing wavelength is adjustable from 1890 to 2050 nm. The fiber power amplifier provides a total gain of ~17 dB at 2 μm which boosts the signal power to the 300 W-level. The maximum average power reaches 327.5 W at 1930 nm with the highest slope efficiency of 57.4%. This TDFL can afford >270 W lasing operation over the whole tuning range of 140 nm spanning from 1910 to 2050 nm, together with high spectral quality and power stability. This is the first demonstration, to the best of our knowledge, on an all-fiber integrated wavelength-widely-tunable TDFL at 2 μm with output power at the 300 W-level. The results are of great interest for many applications.