Stabilization and power scaling of cladding pumped Er:Yb-codoped fiber amplifier via auxiliary signal at 1064 nm

To the best of our knowledge we report for the first time on an Yb-sensitized Er-doped cladding pumped fiber amplifier which is simultaneously seeded by two single-frequency lasers operating at 1556 nm and 1064 nm, respectively. This mode of operation ensures stable amplifier operation by reducing the gain around 1 microm wavelength to the large signal gain value, while having no significant effect on the slope efficiency of the amplification process at 1556 nm when pumping at 976 nm. We were able to demonstrate stable output power of 8.7 W at 1556 nm with an amplifier gain of > 22 dB, a co-propagating pumping scheme and the power limitation only being set by the available amount of pump power.