Robust eye-safe pulsed fiber laser source for 3D ladar applications

Abstract

We present a pulsed all-fiber Er/Yb-doped master oscillator power amplifier at 1.55 μm wavelength. In a simple two-stage amplifier design, the source delivers 140 μJ pulses at 25 kHz and 50 kHz pulse repetition frequency, and 100 μJ at 100 kHz, with pulse durations of ∼10 ns and beam quality of M2 = 1.3. The MOPA is suitable as a robust field source for ladar applications, and has been tested in an in-house developed scanning ladar system.