Abstract

Ultrafast thulium-doped fiber lasers emitting in the 2 μm wavelength region have recently attracted a significant amount of attention regarding applications in material processing, life sciences, as well as in fundamental science, e.g. high harmonic generation, particle acceleration, mid-IR generation [1,2]. In addition to the application-relevant emission wavelength, Tm-doped silica fibers possess many interesting characteristics, such as a broad gain bandwidth spanning from 1700 nm to 2100 nm and more than 70% slope efficiency by exploiting crossrelaxation processes [3]. Furthermore, the longer operation wavelength reduces the impact of detrimental nonlinear effects in fiber lasers, and allows for a larger mode field area with diffraction-limited beam quality as compared to the well-established ytterbium-doped fiber laser systems [4].

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