Abstract

A thulium-doped fiber chirped pulse amplifier (FCPA) is presented and used to pump a ZrF4-BaF2-LaF3-AlF3-NaF (ZBLAN) fiber for mid-infrared supercontinuum generation. The FCPA delivers 10 W average power at repetition rate of 10 MHz with pulse width of 252 fs. The pulses are coupled into 10 m ZBLAN fiber using an aspheric lens. Maximum output power of 800 mW corresponding to pulse energy of 80 nJ has been obtained with 5 dB spectrum ranging from 2 μm to 3.5 μm, which is limited by the low pump coupling efficiency of ~10% at this time.

© 2017 Optical Society of America