Room temperature fiber laser at 3.92 {\mu}m

Abstract

Rare-earth-doped fiber lasers are promising contenders in the development of spectroscopy, free-space communications and countermeasure applications in the 3 - 5 {\mu}m spectral region. However, given the limited transparency of the commonly used fluorozirconate glass fiber, these systems have only achieved wavelength coverage up to 3.8 {\mu}m, hence fueling the development of more suitable fiber glass compositions. To this extent, we propose in this Letter a novel heavily holmium-doped fluoroindate fiber, providing extended transparency up to 5 {\mu}m, to demonstrate the longest wavelength room temperature fiber laser at 3.92 {\mu}m. Achieving $\approx$ 200 mW of output power when cladding pumped by a commercial 888 nm laser diode, this demonstration paves the way for powerful mid-infrared fiber lasers emitting at and beyond 4 {\mu}m.