100 W-level Tm-doped fiber laser pumped by 1173 nm Raman fiber lasers

We present a high power and high efficiency Tm-doped fiber laser (TDFL) pumped by two high power Raman fiber lasers (RFLs) at 1173 nm. The output power of the TDFL reached 96 W with slope efficiency of 0.42. The central wavelength located at 1943.3 nm with a 3 dB bandwidth of 0.1 nm. Higher output power can be achieved if more RFLs are employed to pump the TDFL. This is to our knowledge the first demonstration with 100 W-level output power achieved in TDFLs around their ∼1200 nm absorption band pumped by RFLs, which indicates a promising and powerful pump scheme to achieve higher power output in TDFLs.