High repetition rate gain-switched thulium-doped fiber laser pumped by 1.6 μm noise-like pulses

Abstract We demonstrate a watt-level 2 μm high repetition rate gain-switched thulium-doped fiber laser (TDFL) pumped by 1.6 μm noise-like pulses (NLPs). Served as pump pulses, the hundred nanoseconds level NLPs from a mode-locked fiber laser are amplified to ~8 μJ by an Er:Yb co-doped fiber amplifier. Referring to simulative and experimental results of the gain-switched TDFL, the cavity parameters are adapted for the performance of the gain-switched pulse. The TDFL generates 1940 nm gain-switched pulses with the minimum pulse duration of 14.7 ns in the cavity length of 14 cm. The maximum output power reaches 2.44 W. The research firstly reports a gain-switched TDFL pumped by noise-like pulses and provide a method to generate high repetition rate gain-switched short pulse.