Active polarization control of a 1.43 kW narrow linewidth fiber amplifier based on SPGD algorithm

Active polarization control of a high power fiber amplifier has been demonstrated. The master oscillator power amplifier system consisted of a narrow linewidth laser seed and a three-stage Yb-fiber amplifier. The narrow linewidth laser seed was generated by phase modulating a single frequency fiber laser using a white noise source. Maximum power of 1437 W was obtained from the main amplifier, which was limited by the available pump power. When the polarization state of the narrow linewidth (∼0.17 nm) laser was actively controlled by using a polarization controller based on stochastic parallel gradient descent algorithm, the polarization extinction ratio of the laser beam was more than 11.1 dB at the maximum output power.