Abstract

The field of mid-infrared photonics is growing rapidly due to the expanding range of light sources and the growing number of applications that use these sources of light. Fibre lasers that emit in (or very close to) the mid-infrared have been of research interest for a number of decades however only recently has there been a commercial device on offer [1]; a system which is based on erbium doped fluoride glass optical fibre that is diode-pumped using widely available 976 nm diodes. Despite this encouraging development, there are still a number of important challenges in the areas of reliability, efficiency, output power and overall robustness that must be overcome before we see wider uptake of mid-infrared fibre lasers in science, medicine and industry.

© 2015 IEEE