Single-frequency gain-switched Ho-doped fiber laser

We demonstrate a single-frequency gain-switched Ho-doped fiber laser based on heavily doped silicate glass fiber fabricated in-house. A Q-switched Tm-doped fiber laser at 1.95 μm was used to gain-switch the Ho-doped fiber laser via in-band pumping. Output power of the single-frequency gain-switched pulses has been amplified in a cladding-pumped Tm-Ho-codoped fiber amplifier with 1.2 m active fiber pumped at 803 nm. Two different nonlinear effects, i.e., modulation instability and stimulated Brillouin scattering, could be seen in the 10 μm-core fiber amplifier when the peak power exceeds 3 kW. The single-frequency gain-switched fiber laser was operated at 2.05 μm, a popular laser wavelength for Doppler lidar application. This is the first demonstration of this kind of fiber laser.