Advances in Fiber Combined Pump Modules for Fiber Lasers

Fiber combining multiple pump sources for fiber lasers has enabled the thermal and reliability advantages of distributed architectures. Recently, mini-bar based modules have been demonstrated which combine the advantages of independent emitter failures previously shown in single-stripe pumps with improved brightness retention yielding over 2 MW/cm 2 Sr in compact economic modules. In this work multiple fiber-coupled mini-bars are fiber combined to yield an output of over 400 W with a brightness exceeding 1 MW/cm 2 Sr in an economic, low loss architecture.