Accelerated Coupled Mode Model for Fiber Laser Amplifiers as an Averaged Dynamical System

Abstract

We apply a known theorem for simplifying dynamical systems with bounded error to a specific optical fiber waveguide problem, supplementing the physical intuition and heuristics used in the optics community with proper mathematical justification. Using techniques from averaging theory of dynamical systems, a reliable accelerated model based on the coupled mode theory (CMT) approach for a common fiber laser amplifier application is derived. Computational testing reveals that this accelerated model achieves an ${\sim}4000$x increase in computational speed compared to the CMT model while preserving a high accuracy in key figures-of-merit such as output power and amplification efficiency. Further, we argue that by adopting our recommended approximations within the reduced model framework enables the model to be applied a wider set of amplifier types and configurations than can the current (comparable) reduced models found in the literature.