We present comprehensive theoretical study of mode instability with a universal model for the first time, which includes quantitative study on the various influence factors and mitigation methods. With large numerical results, the influence of various fiber and system parameters has been studied to summary mitigation methods. The mode instability threshold behavior of multi-wavelength pumping configurations has been studied for the first time, and the influence of pump wavelength shifting in tandem pumping technique and amplitude modulation frequency have also been given for the first time. The mitigation methods are discussed with review of the latest developments in experimental results. The drawbacks and possible overcome measures are also discussed. By properly combining the mitigation methods, an approach to achieve beyond 10kW diode pumped fiber laser with near diffraction limited beam quality has been proposed, which provides a creative way to overcome the mode instability limitation on diode pumped fiber lasers, and demonstrates the effectiveness of the mitigation methods.

A high-power monolithic continuous wave (CW) Yb doped fiber amplifier at 1064 nm has been demonstrated based on traditional large mode area step-index fiber, which generated 5.07 kW narrow line-width laser with near diffraction-limited beam quality. At the maximal output power, >35dB OSNR has been achieved with line-width being 370pm, and the measured beam quality is M ² _x = 1.252, M ² _y = 1.322. The influence of cooling temperature on SRS has been investigated in high power fiber lasers, which shows that the SRS at 4kW has been suppressed 24 dB by lowering the temperature from 20°C to 8°C. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest narrow line-width laser power generated from the traditional large mode area step-index monolithic fiber amplifier.

In this paper, we report a 3.7 kW all fiber narrow linewidth single mode fiber laser. The full width at half-maximum is about 0.30 nm, and the beam quality is ${\text{M}}_x^2=1.358$, ${\text{M}}_y^2=1.202$ at maximum output power. The laser is achieved by simultaneously suppressing nonlinear effects and mode instability (MI). Different seeds are injected into the main amplifier to study stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) effect. The results show that the phase modulated single frequency seed is benefit to suppress the SRS effect. For the phase modulated single frequency seed, inserting a filter in preamplifier will suppress amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) and decrease the backward power. By optimizing the coiling of active fiber, the MI effect is suppressed.

The experimental investigation of mode distortion induced by stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) in a high-power fiber amplifier, which includes the evolutions of optical spectra, spatial beam profiles, and time-frequency characteristics, has been carried out in detail. Temporal-frequency characteristics have been studied for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, by using a low-speed camera and high-speed photodiode traces, which revealed that temporal-frequency characteristics of SRS-induced mode distortion are different from traditional dynamic mode instability (MI). The experimental results show that the output beam profile remains stable before the mode distortion occurs and fluctuates obviously after the onset of SRS-induced MI but on a time scale of seconds, which is much lower than that of Yb-gain-induced MI featuring millisecond-level beam profile fluctuation. It also shows that the mode distortion became measurable in company with the onset of inter-mode four-wave mixing (IM-FWM) when the ratio of Raman light reaches 3%; further, the beam quality factor M 2 degrades gradually from 1.4 to 2.1 as the ratio of Raman light increases. The mode distortion is accompanied by an obvious temperature increase of the output passive fiber, which further confirms that the mode distortion originates from SRS. The cause of the mode distortion induced by SRS has been explained in the context of core-pumped SRS effect, and the investigation on the accompanying IM-FWM effect indicates that the main content of the SRS-induced high-order mode is the LP21 mode.

Impact of mode instability on dynamic characteristics of stimulated Raman scattering in high power fiber amplifiers has been studied for the first time, which reveals another characterization of mode instability from the aspect of optical spectrum. It shows that, after the onset of mode instability, the measured light spectrums, especially the Raman light spectrums, are different from those without mode instability, which become burr-like. As mode instability evolves into different stages, the intensity of stimulated Raman scattering effects as laser power increasing also behaves differently. During the transition region, the stimulated Raman scattering effect becomes stronger as the lasing power increases until the mode instability evolves into chaotic regions, where the stimulated Raman scattering effect weakens. The effect of stimulated Raman scattering on mode instability has also been studied. Due to that the stimulated Raman scattering effect is weak and that the fraction of Raman light is only a few percent, the stimulated-Raman-scattering-induced mode instability has not been observed in the experiment, and the observed mode instability is induced by ytterbium ion gain of signal laser. It also revealed that the stimulated Raman scattering has negligible influence on the mode instability induced by ytterbium ion gain.

In this paper, we present experimental studies on newly developed multiplexed chirped tilted fiber Bragg gratings (MCTFBGs) for stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) suppression for high-power fiber laser systems. The MCTFBG device is composed of five continuous segments of chirped tilted fiber Bragg gratings (CTFBGs), which are inscribed into the large-mode-area (LMA, 25/400μm) fibers. The SRS suppression capability of the MCTFBG device has been successfully demonstrated with a master oscillator power amplification (MOPA) fiber laser system at the output level of 3.4 KW. The experimental observation thus indicates the MCTFBG’s excellent SRS suppression capability at a very high power level (∼15 dB under >3 kW) and high thermal handling capacity (∼1.48℃/kw). Our work thus provides a key development of essential fiber grating components that can effectively suppress the SRS suppression at a very high power level.