Formation and performance analysis of a 2 µm region thulium-doped fiber laser using different pump wavelengths

Abstract

Lasers operating at 2 µm are highly useful for applications such as medical surgery, light detection and ranging (LIDAR), free-space communication, and directed infrared countermeasures (DIRCM). In this paper, the formation of a 2 µm region thulium-doped fiber laser is presented along with its performance evaluation using different pump wavelengths. A cost-effective thulium-doped laser in the 2 µm region is achieved by employing pump lasers of wavelengths 1,050 nm, 1,560 nm, 1,700 nm, and 1,740 nm. The input pump power is varied from 0.2 W to 2 W to analyze the output characteristics at 1,940 nm. The results show that output power increases with input pump power for all pumping schemes. A comparative study reported that a pump wavelength of 1,740 nm yielded the highest output power among the other cases. Therefore, it is observed that an efficient and stable 2 µm laser can be obtained using an optimised pump wavelength with suitable system parameters.