Low-frequency parametric amplification in saturable ytterbium-doped fibers at 1064 nm

Abstract

Experimental results on parametric optical processes in saturable ytterbium-doped fibers (YDFs) at the wavelength of 1064 nm are reported. Significant photoinduced change of the refractive index under saturation of the fiber-optical absorption in the near-infrared range enables us to consider this medium as an effective optical Kerr (χ′′′) medium. For pumping, it needs continuous-wave Nd:YAG laser power of 10-mW scale, but the saturation process has the characteristic time ≤1ms, governed by the metastable level lifetime in YDF. We investigate the nearly degenerate collinear configuration of the optical parametric amplification (OPA). Here we focus on unidirectional transformation of the initial amplitude modulation in the incident pump wave to the output phase modulation as a manifestation of OPA in a narrowband case. This effect results from the conventional coupled-wave equations for the signal and idler waves—if one considers them as the modulation sidebands. It can also be treated as a result of the self-phase modulation of the periodically modulated pump in the Kerr medium. OPA gain of about 0.64 with the net gain ≈0.29 was experimentally estimated for the utilized 2-m-long YDF in the frequency band ≈200Hz.