Theory of Transverse Mode Instability in Fiber Amplifiers with Multimode Excitations

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wisal, Kabish, Chen, Chun-Wei, Cao, Hui, Stone, A. Douglas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866913429130838016
author Wisal, Kabish
Chen, Chun-Wei
Cao, Hui
Stone, A. Douglas
author_facet Wisal, Kabish
Chen, Chun-Wei
Cao, Hui
Stone, A. Douglas
contents Transverse Mode Instability (TMI) which results from dynamic nonlinear thermo-optical scattering is the primary limitation to power scaling in high-power fiber lasers and amplifiers. It has been proposed that TMI can be suppressed by exciting multiple modes in a highly multimode fiber. We derive a semi-analytic frequency-domain theory of the threshold for the onset of TMI under arbitrary multimode input excitation for general fiber geometries. We show that TMI results from exponential growth of noise in all the modes at downshifted frequencies due to the thermo-optical coupling. The noise growth rate in each mode is given by the sum of signal powers in various modes weighted by pairwise thermo-optical coupling coefficients. We calculate thermo-optical coupling coefficients for all $\sim$$10^4$ pairs of modes in a standard circular multimode fiber and show that modes with large transverse spatial frequency mismatch are weakly coupled resulting in a banded coupling matrix. This short-range behavior is due to the diffusive nature of the heat propagation which mediates the coupling and leads to a lower noise growth rate upon multimode excitation compared to single mode, resulting in significant TMI suppression. We find that the TMI threshold increases linearly with the number of modes that are excited, leading to more than an order of magnitude increase in the TMI threshold in a 82-mode fiber amplifier. Using our theory, we also calculate TMI threshold in fibers with non-circular geometries upon multimode excitation and show the linear scaling of TMI threshold to be a universal property of different fibers.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2308_11599
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Theory of Transverse Mode Instability in Fiber Amplifiers with Multimode Excitations
Wisal, Kabish
Chen, Chun-Wei
Cao, Hui
Stone, A. Douglas
Optics
Transverse Mode Instability (TMI) which results from dynamic nonlinear thermo-optical scattering is the primary limitation to power scaling in high-power fiber lasers and amplifiers. It has been proposed that TMI can be suppressed by exciting multiple modes in a highly multimode fiber. We derive a semi-analytic frequency-domain theory of the threshold for the onset of TMI under arbitrary multimode input excitation for general fiber geometries. We show that TMI results from exponential growth of noise in all the modes at downshifted frequencies due to the thermo-optical coupling. The noise growth rate in each mode is given by the sum of signal powers in various modes weighted by pairwise thermo-optical coupling coefficients. We calculate thermo-optical coupling coefficients for all $\sim$$10^4$ pairs of modes in a standard circular multimode fiber and show that modes with large transverse spatial frequency mismatch are weakly coupled resulting in a banded coupling matrix. This short-range behavior is due to the diffusive nature of the heat propagation which mediates the coupling and leads to a lower noise growth rate upon multimode excitation compared to single mode, resulting in significant TMI suppression. We find that the TMI threshold increases linearly with the number of modes that are excited, leading to more than an order of magnitude increase in the TMI threshold in a 82-mode fiber amplifier. Using our theory, we also calculate TMI threshold in fibers with non-circular geometries upon multimode excitation and show the linear scaling of TMI threshold to be a universal property of different fibers.
title Theory of Transverse Mode Instability in Fiber Amplifiers with Multimode Excitations
topic Optics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.11599