Abstract

This study focuses on investigating the impact of the spectral linewidth of a seed laser in a master-oscillator power amplifier (MOPA) configuration on stimulated Brillouin scattering and the beam quality of the output diffracted by a grating. To conduct the study, a distributed feedback (DFB) laser is modulated in a pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS) and amplified by a two-stage Yb-doped fiber amplifier to achieve an output power of over 1 kW. The spectral linewidth of the seed laser is systematically varied from 1 to 12 GHz in the frequency domain by varying the PRBS modulation parameters. The experimental results reveal a tradeoff between suppressing stimulated Brillouin scattering and enhancing beam quality with increased spectral linewidth. Therefore, the study provides valuable insights into optimizing spectral beam combining to achieve high beam quality and scalable power upgrade in fiber lasers.