Optimizing thermal load and power scaling in Er3+-doped ZBLAN fiber lasers

Abstract Thanks to characteristics such as high beam qualities and high average powers, largely founded on the outstanding characteristics of fibers as an active medium, fiber lasers have become one of the most popular laser technologies. Although most of the advantages of fiber lasers stem from their geometry, the same geometry is the main source of the limitations. In this study, we focused on managing the thermal load by variable absorption coefficient in order to increase the thermal limits, which are an important limitation of further development in fiber technology. Metaheuristic optimization approaches can be used to improve the performance of fiber technologies with physical constraints. The main aim of metaheuristic optimization is to improve the output of the function with respect to the parameters considered as significant. Swarm Optimization approach is one of the powerful metaheuristic approaches proven to be quite promising to address the above issues. In this study, the optimization of the thermal management of the Er 3 + -doped ZBLAN fiber laser is performed using Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm (ABC). Additionally, this paper proposes four new strategies of initial parameter setting, repair parameter values, and fitness function for the thermal load of the Er 3 + -doped ZBLAN fiber laser with respect to the output power. The results show that the absorption coefficient functions obtained by ABC algorithm give more effective and efficient results than the obtained rising functions.