835 nm fiber Raman laser pulse pumped by a multimode laser diode at 806 nm

We present a fiber Raman laser (FRL) based on a highly nonlinear fiber that emits pulses at 835 nm when synchronously pumped by a broadstripe semiconductor laser diode (LD) at 806 nm. The slope efficiency reaches 65% in a 600 m long fiber for a 100 ns long pulse. Our results show that broadstripe LDs are now sufficiently bright for the Raman gain to overcome the relatively high background loss at wavelengths as short as 835 nm, which we believe is the shortest reported to date for any diode-pumped FRL.