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935 nm Nd3 fibre laser incorporating
tapered photonic bandgap fibre filter

A. Wang, W. Ding, T.A. Birks and J.C. Knight
An 8 cm length of photonic bandgap fibre was tapered in the middle to
narrow the transmission windows. The tapered fibre was incorporated
into a neodymium fibre laser system, in which it suppressed the strong
gain peaks at 907 and 1080 nm and ensured lasing at 935 nm.
Introduction: The operation of the three-level transition 4F3=2-4I9=2

(890950 nm) in neodymium-doped fibre lasers has attracted interest
for several applications. One of these is atmospheric water-vapour
detection (water vapour has a strong absorption band around 940 nm)
[1], which is of vital importance for accurate treatment of cloud
formation and radiative transfer in atmospheric models [2]. To realise
a robust Nd fibre laser source around 940 nm, a pure silica or Gedoped silica host has been shown to have the longest emission
wavelength (up to 960 nm), highest emission cross-section around
940 nm and the lowest ground state absorption [1]. One of the
emission peaks is located at 935 nm [1], corresponding to a very
strong water absorption line of current interest [3]. However, running
this as a laser transition is non-trivial because of ground-state
absorption and the undesired competition from the four-level
transition 4F3=2-4I11=2 (10601100 nm) and another stronger threelevel transition emission peak around 907 nm when pumped at
808 nm [1, 4].
In our previous work we used the strong spectral discrimination in
the transmission of photonic bandgap fibre (PBGF) to suppress the
four-level transition around 1080 nm and obtain lasing at 907 nm (or
dual-wavelength lasing at 907 and 935 nm) [5]. To suppress the signal
at both 907 and 1080 nm without affecting that at 935 nm, however, we
require an all-solid PBGF with a narrower transmission window. We
found this difficult to achieve using simple structures formed from lowindex-contrast materials such as doped and undoped silica. However, a
narrow transmission filter function can be realised by tapering a section
of a piece of low-index-contrast photonic bandgap fibre, so that its
transmission changes along its length. Note that bent W-type fibre
[6] can only be used to suppress the gain at longer wavelengths, so
previous researchers used a long doped fibre and a bulk grating to
obtain lasing in the 940 nm band, resulting in low slope efficiency of the
laser system [6].
In this Letter, an 8 cm length of all-solid PBGF was tapered in the
central 2 cm to obtain a narrowed transmission window. This tapered
PBGF was then incorporated in a neodymium fibre laser cavity,
suppressing both the three-level transition at 907 nm and the fourlevel transition at 1080 nm, thus ensuring lasing at 935 nm. The
threshold for this laser was about 150 mW with a measured slope
efficiency of 21%.
PBGF taper device: The fabrication and cladding structure of the

photonic bandgap fibre we used was described in our previous work
[5]. The outer diameter of our fibre was 108 mm and the pitch was
7.9 mm. A 2 cm length of a piece of the fibre was tapered to 93 mm
outer diameter on a standard fibre tapering station. Fig. 1a shows the
configuration of the tapered PBGF, which was fusion-spliced to
standard singlemode fibres (Corning SMF28) at both ends. The
transmission spectra of PBGFs with uniform outer diameters of 108
and 93 mm were measured and are displayed in Fig. 1b. The overlap
between the high transmission windows of these two different-sized
fibres formed the low-loss transmission bands of the length of PBGF
incorporating both tapered and untapered sections. This is demonstrated by the transmission measurement of this whole device, shown
in Fig. 1c. Slight bending (typical radius of curvature >10 cm) can
also contribute to narrowing of the transmission windows and
enhancement of the spectral discrimination between 907 and
935 nm as shown in Fig. 1c, which is consistent with the observed
results about bend loss in [7]. The insertion loss of the device was
measured to be less than 3 dB at the lasing wavelength of 935 nm,
mainly due to splice losses at the two splices to SMF28. The extra loss
introduced by fibre tapering was very small compared to the splice
losses.
Fig. 1 Configuration of PBGF taper device (Fig. 1a); transmission spectra

of uniform PBGFs with outer diameters of 108 and 93 mm (Fig. 1b);
transmission spectra of PBGF taper device under increasing bending
conditions (Fig. 1c)
Laser setup: The Nd-doped fibre and the laser configuration used in
this Letter have been described in our previous work [5]. Light from a
CW Ti:Sapphire pump laser tuned to 808 nm with maximum power of
700 mW was passed through a dichroic mirror [5] and launched into a
standard Nd-doped gain fibre with an overall coupling efficiency of
52%. Standard singlemode fibre (Corning SMF28) was used as an
intermediary to splice the gain fibre to the PGBF taper device. The
splice loss between the gain fibre and SMF28 fibre was reduced to
around 0.2 dB by adjusting the splice parameters. The other end of the
tapered PBGF was butted to a highly reflective metallic mirror to form
one end of the cavity, and the other end of the cavity was formed by
the cleaved end-face of the gain fibre. The laser output was separated
from the counter-propagating pump by the dichroic mirror. The
tapered PBGF (as demonstrated in Fig. 1) should act as a bandpass
filter to suppress lasing at 907 and 1080 nm and obtain lasing at
935 nm.
Fig. 2 Lasing spectrum (solid line) of 4 m Nd3 doped fibre laser: without
wavelength-selective element in laser cavity (Fig. 2a); with uniform
93 mm-outer-diameter PBGF in cavity (Fig. 2b); with PBGF taper shown
in Fig. 1. (Fig. 2c)
Dashed lines are corresponding transmission spectra of PBGF or PBGF taper
ELECTRONICS LETTERS 15th March 2007 Vol. 43 No. 6
Laser results: For the three-level laser system, the Nd-doped fibre has
an optimum length that is a balance between signal reabsorption and
pump utilisation [5]. By cutting back from a fibre length of 10 m and
characterising the maximal slope efficiency for each step, the optimal
length of gain fibre was found to be around 4 m. Fig. 2c shows the laser
spectrum obtained using the 4 m Nd-doped fibre with the taper device
in the cavity. The PBGF taper was adjusted by slight bending to ensure
laser operation at 935 nm and obtain the best laser performance. The
spectrum shows that the desired signal at 935 nm is more than 30 dB
higher than that at 907 nm and even higher than that at 1080 nm,
which means the undesired signals are greatly suppressed by our
device. Data demonstrating the slope efficiency of this laser is
presented in Fig. 3. The lasing threshold is about 150 mW launched
pump power and the slope efficiency is about 21%. As a comparison,
we butted the end of 4 m Nd-doped fibre against the metallic mirror
directly without the PBGF taper device and obtain the lasing on the
four-level transition around 1080 nm, shown in Fig. 2a. Inserting a
uniform 108 mm-outer-diameter PBGF caused very little change to the
results, with lasing still around 1080 nm. Dual-wavelength lasing was
observed if we used a uniform 93 mm-outer-diameter PBGF as the
wavelength selective element in the laser configuration, as shown in
Fig. 2b. The corresponding transmission spectra of the PBGF or PBGF
taper are shown in Fig. 2 as dashed lines.
Conclusion: Tapering a photonic bandgap fibre provides an extra

degree of freedom to adjust the transmission properties. We have used
a tapered fibre as an intra-cavity wavelength-selective element to force
a Nd-doped fibre laser to lase on the transition at 935 nm by
suppressing the gain at both 1080 and 907 nm. The threshold was
about 150 mW with a slope efficiency of 21%.
Acknowledgments: This work was funded by the U.K. Engineering
and Physical Sciences Research Council.
# The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2007
23 January 2007
Electronics Letters online no: 20070242
doi: 10.1049/el:20070242
A. Wang, W. Ding, T.A. Birks and J.C. Knight (Centre for Photonics
and Photonic Materials, Department of Physics, University of Bath,
Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, United Kingdom)
E-mail: pypaw@bath.ac.uk
References
1 Dragic, P.D., Little, L.M., and Papen, G.C.: Fiber amplification in the
940-nm water vapor absorption band using the 4F3=2-4I9=2 transition in
Nd, IEEE Photonics Technol. Lett., 1997, 9, (11), pp. 14781480
2 Mockler, S.: Water vapor in the climate system, Special Report,
American, Geophysical Union, 1995.
3 Chu, Z., Wilkerson, T.D., and Singh, U.N.: Water-vapor absorption line
measurements in the 940-nm band by using a Raman-shifted dye laser,
Appl. Opt., 1993, 32, (6), pp. 992998
4 Okhotnikov, O.G., and Salcedo, J.R.: Spectroscopy of the transient
oscillations in a Nd3-doped fiber laser for the four-level 4F3=2-4I11=2
(1060 nm) and three-level 4F3=2-4I9=2 (900 nm) transitions, Appl. Phys.
Lett., 1994, 64, (20), pp. 26192621
5 Wang, A., George, A.K., and Knight, J.C.: Three-level neodymium fiber
laser incorporating photonic bandgap fiber, Opt. Lett., 2006, 31, (10),
pp. 13881390
6 Yoo, S., Soh Daniel, B.S., Kim, J., Jung, Y., Nilsson, J., Sahu, J.K.,
Lee, J.W., and Oh, K.: Analysis of W-type waveguide for Nd-doped fiber
laser operating near 940 nm, Opt. Commun., 2005, 247, pp. 153162
7 Birks, T.A., Luan, F., Pearce, G.J., Wang, A., Knight, J.C., and
Bird, D.M.: Bend loss in all-solid bandgap fibres, Opt. Express, 2006,
14, (12), pp. 56885698
Fig. 3 Measured slope efficiency of laser incorporating PBGF taper
ELECTRONICS LETTERS 15th March 2007 Vol. 43 No. 6

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935 nm Nd3 fibre laser incorporating

tapered photonic bandgap fibre filter

Introduction: The operation of the three-level transition 4F3=2-4I9=2

PBGF taper device: The fabrication and cladding structure of the

Fig. 1 Configuration of PBGF taper device (Fig. 1a); transmission spectra

ELECTRONICS LETTERS 15th March 2007 Vol. 43 No. 6

Conclusion: Tapering a photonic bandgap fibre provides an extra

Fig. 3 Measured slope efficiency of laser incorporating PBGF taper

ELECTRONICS LETTERS 15th March 2007 Vol. 43 No. 6

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