Polarization maintaining, high-power and high-efficiency (6+1)×1 pump/signal combiner

We have developed an all-glass, fusion spliceable polarization maintaining (6+1)× 1 pump/signal combiner for fiber lasers and amplifiers. We utilize an enhanced tapered fiber bundle technology for multimode pump channels and a vanishing core fiber for the single mode polarization maintaining large mode area (PLMA) signal channel. The signal channel of the combiner is optimized to match a double-clad PLMA fiber with 20 micron core and 400 micron glass cladding with 0.065 numerical aperture (NA). The multimode pump channels have 200 micron core and 240 micron cladding with NA of 0.22 designed to deliver high power 980 nm pump light. The same double-clad PLMA fiber is used as both the signal input channel and the combined output for the device. Polarization axes of the input and output PLMA fibers are aligned during the fusion splices to achieve polarization crosstalk below -20 dB. Utilizing this approach, we have achieved coupling loss of ~0.4 dB for the signal channel as measured from the input PLMA to the output PLMA at a wavelength of 1060 nm and coupling loss below 0.01 dB for all pump channels as determined from the measured temperature rise of the combiner package temperature as the optical pump power at 974 nm is increased up to 45 W. Low signal and pump losses result in high efficiency lasing or amplification at over a kW of pump power for high power applications where a single mode, high polarization extinction ratio output is required.