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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Phys., 22 February 2023
Sec. Optics and Photonics

M2 factor for evaluating fiber lasers from large mode area few-mode fibers

Rumao TaoRumao Tao1Long HuangLong Huang2Min LiMin Li1Benjian ShenBenjian Shen1Xi FengXi Feng1Lianghua XieLianghua Xie1Jin WengJin Weng1Dong Zhi
Dong Zhi2*
  • 1Laser Fusion Research Center, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Mianyang, China
  • 2Hypervelocity Aerodynamics Institute, China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center, Mianyang, China

Evaluating the laser quality accurately is one of the most important and fundamental physical issues for laser sources, and the beam quality of lasers from the large mode area few-mode fibers have been haunted by the presence of high order mode for many years. This paper presents a modification to the M2 factor, which can be used to evaluate the mode content of fiber lasers accurately and efficiently, no matter whether the fiber modes are superposited coherently or incoherently. By mathematical derivation, the origin of the influence of relative phase on the M2 factor has been determined mathematically. A modification to the second moment of the beam intensity profile has been proposed, which eliminates the impact of uncontrollable relative phase on the second moment, and subsequently restores the one-to-one mapping between mode content and M2 factor even for coherent superposition cases. Also presented are the results of numerical simulations, which support the validity of the modified M2 factor to evaluate the mode content of the high power fiber lasers. With modified M2 factor being less than 1.1, the power fraction of LP11 mode content is unique and determined to be less than 3%.

1 Introduction

Narrow Linewidth fiber laser systems, which have earned a solid reputation as a highly power scalable laser with excellent beam quality, are attractive sources for many applications, such as coherent lidar systems, nonlinear frequency conversion, and coherent/spectral beam combining architectures [14]. As the output power of fiber lasers grows into the multi-hundred range, detrimental nonlinear effects such as the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) and the self-phase modulation (SPM) become the major limit factors that preclude further power upscaling [5]. Low numerical aperture (NA), large mode area (LMA) step index fiber designs, which support only a few modes in the core, have been employed to overcome the limitation of the nonlinear effects while maintaining a high beam quality of the output laser [610]. Various coiling of the fibers have been employed to filter the high order modes and achieve single mode (SM) operation in few-mode fiber [1116], where criteria are required to evaluate the performance of these coiling tactic. After the introduce of M2-factor, the M2-factor has now become a indispensable standard of the laser beam quality in the fiber laser research and development, and the measured M2-factor is nearly always specified to evaluate the fundamental mode (LP01) purity whenever a new fiber laser source is demonstrated or produced. The M2-factor is generally used to evaluate the fundamental mode purity in the aforementioned tactic of achieving SM operation in LMA fibers [1116], and low M2 values have been taken to imply that the near-SM or near-diffraction-limited performance is achieved: lower M2 values means higher fraction of fundamental mode content in LMA fibers. Although the M2 values of the fundamental mode is about 1, it does not means that the laser contains more fundamental mode power by M2 →1. In LMA fiber, the high order mode, especially LP11 mode, is hard to be eliminated completely [18, 19]. Coiling-induced bend loss increases with the order of the fiber mode, and the bend loss of LP11 mode is the lowest among the high order mode. Meanwhile, the fiber perturbations result in that the high order modes are continually repopulated due to coupling between the fundamental mode and the high order modes [17], which is the strongest for the LP11 mode. In the presence of LP11 mode, even the excellent beam quality (M2 < 1.1) in LMA fibers does not guarantee low power fraction of LP11 mode when the modes are superposited coherently, which are generally true for the narrow linewidth fiber lasers [18]. Due to the presence of the relative phase between the fiber modes, there is no one-to-one mapping between the mode content and the M2-factor for the coherent superposition cases [18, 20]. For certain superposition state in LMA fibers, the M2 value can be as good as 1.08 for a fiber laser consists of 30% LP11 and 70% LP01 [18], which results in that the widely employed criteria is unable to evaluate the fiber laser mode purity performance, and limits the applications of high power fiber lasers in the cases requiring strict mode purity. To determine the fundamental mode content, sophisticated methods should be employed, such as spatially and spectrally resolved imaging, cross-correlated imaging, modal decomposition [2125]. However, the aforementioned methods require specially designed experimental setups and complicated algorithms, and are not compatible with the standard measuring instruments in laser industry [26, 27]. In recent years, some intelligent methods have been introduced to calculate the M2-factor [2830], which is still suffered from the problem induced by the presence of high order modes. A modification to the present method is simple and compatible with the standard measuring instruments, which inspires the work in this manuscript.

In this manuscript, the term that leads to the variation of the M2 factor has been determined, and a modification to M2 factor has been proposed to evaluate the beam quality or mode content of high power narrow linewidth laser from the LMA low NA step index fibers, which can mitigate the dependence of M2 factor on the uncontrollable relative phase between the LP01 and LP11 modes, and restores the one-to-one mapping between the mode content and the M2-factor for coherent superposition cases. Numerical simulations have been carried out to validate the modified M2 factor, which revealed that the modified M2 factor can be used to evaluate the mode content of fiber lasers, no matter whether the modes are superposited coherently or incoherently.

2 Theoretical model

As pointed out in [18, 19], for low NA, LMA fiber, LP11 mode is hard to be stripped totally and is the most problematic. In the following analysis, we focus our attention mainly on the case that only LP11 mode is contained in the laser, and the electric field of the high power fiber laser for narrow linewidth fiber laser can be expressed as [17]:

Ex,y,0=1P11ΨLP01x,y,0+P11eiΔϕ11ΨLP11x,y,0,(1)

where P11 is the power in the LP11 mode, and △ϕ11 is the relative phase between the LP11 mode and the LP01 mode, which drift with fluctuations in temperature and other environmental factors, and are difficult to reliably control. In step index fibers, the normalized electric field of LP11 mode ψLPmn(x, y, z = 0) can be written as:

ΨLPmnx,y,0=fmnrNmncosmϕ,(2)

with

fmnr=JmUmnr/aJmUmnar>0,(3a)
fmnr=KmWmnr/aKmWmnr>a,(3b)

where Jm and Km is the Bessel function of the first kind and the modified Bessel function of the second kind, respectively, a is the core radius of the fiber, (r = √x2+y2, ϕ) is polar coordinates and λ is the wavelength. Umn and Wmn are defined as in [31], and Nmn is the normalization factor, which can be expressed by:

N0n=2π0f0n2rrdrform=0,(4a)
Nmn=π0fmn2rrdrform>0.(4b)

According to Eq. 1, the intensity of the near field is given by:

Ix,y,0=P01ΨLP012x,y,0+P11ΨLP112x,y,0+2P01P11ΨLP01x,y,0ΨLP11x,y,0cosΔϕ11,(5)

and the intensity of the field after propagating a distance of z is given by:

Ix,y,z=P01ΨLP012x,y,z+P11ΨLP112x,y,z+P01P11ΨLP01*x,y,zΨLP11x,y,zeiΔϕ11+P01P11ΨLP01x,y,zΨLP11*x,y,zeiΔϕ11,(6)

where ΨLPmn(x, y, z) is the field after ΨLPmn(x, y, 0) propagates a distance of z. Then the M2 factor is calculated by [32]:

Mx2=πw0xλzwzx2w0x2,(7a)
My2=πw0yλzwzy2w0y2,(7b)

with

wzx=2σzx,wzy=2σzy,(8a)
σzx2=xx0z2Ix,y,zdxdyIx,y,zdxdy,(8b)
σzy2=yy0z2Ix,y,zdxdyIx,y,zdxdy,(8c)
w0x=2σ0x,w0y=2σ0y,(8d)
σ0x2=xx002Ix,y,0dxdyIx,y,0dxdy,(8e)
σ0y2=yy002Ix,y,0dxdyIx,y,0dxdy,(8f)

where σzx(y) and wzx(y) is the second moment of the beam intensity profile and the beam size at the distance of z along x(y) direction, respectively, which is σ0x(y) and w0x(y) at the near filed. (x0(z), y0(z)) is the gravity center of the beam at the distance of z, given by:

x0=xIdxdyIdxdy,(9a)
y0=yIdxdyIdxdy,(9b)

where I is the laser intensity at arbitrary distance. In Eq. 7a, one can see that the M2 seems to be dependent on the wavelength. However, the wzx(y) is also related to the wavelength through the laser intensity I. In fiber waveguide, the variation of the wavelength changes the V-number, which results in the laser intensity I changes. It is shown that the M2 sharply peaks near the corresponding cutoff values of the V-number but remains nearly constant for V>3 [20]. In the practical high power laser systems, the V is generally larger than 3, so the dependence of M2 on wavelength is negligible. The divergence angle of the beam can be obtained directly from M2 value by employing the simple Equation in [33].

The second moment of the beam intensity profile can be expressed as:

σzx2=x2IdxdyIdxdy+x02IdxdyIdxdy2x0xIdxdyIdxdy,(10a)
σzy2=y2IdxdyIdxdy+y02IdxdyIdxdy2y0yIdxdyIdxdy,(10b)

According to the electric field distribution of the LP01 mode and the LP11 mode, we can obtain:

ΨLP01x,y,0=ΨLP01x,y,0,(11)

and

ΨLP11x,y,0=ΨLP11x,y,0,(12)

where the LP11 mode is assumed to be anti-symmetric along x direction.

By using the extended Huygens–Fresnel principle [3438], the electric field of the modes at the z plane can be expressed as:

ΨLP01p,q,z=k2πzΨLP01x,y,0expik2zpx2+qy2dxdy,(13a)
ΨLP11p,q,z=k2πzΨLP11x,y,0expik2zpx2+qy2dxdy,(13b)

where (p, q) is the coordinate at the z plane. Then we can derive:

ΨLP01p,q,z=k2πzΨLP01x,y,0expik2zpx2+qy2dxdy=ξ=xk2πzΨLP01ξ,y,0expik2zp+ξ2+qy2dξdy,(14a)
ΨLP11p,q,z=k2πzΨLP11x,y,0expik2zpx2+qy2dxdy=ξ=xk2πzΨLP11ξ,y,0expik2zp+ξ2+qy2dξdy,(14b)

Take Eqs 11, 12 into consideration, the above equations can be rewritten as:

ΨLP01p,q,z=k2πzΨLP01ξ,y,0expik2zpξ2+qy2dξdy,(15a)
ΨLP11p,q,z=k2πzΨLP11ξ,y,0expik2zpξ2+qy2dξdy,(15b)

which can be simplified into:

ΨLP01p,q,z=ΨLP01p,q,z,(16)

and

ΨLP11p,q,z=ΨLP11p,q,z,(17)

Referring to the odd-even property, we can obtain:

ΨLP01x,y,zΨLP11x,y,zdxdy=0,(18a)
ΨLP01x,y,zΨLP11x,y,zdxdy=0,(18b)
xΨLP01x,y,zΨLP11x,y,zdxdy0,(18c)
xΨLP01x,y,zΨLP11x,y,zdxdy0,(18d)
x2ΨLP01x,y,zΨLP11x,y,zdxdy=0,(18e)
x2ΨLP01x,y,zΨLP11x,y,zdxdy=0,(18f)

According to Eq. 18a, one can conclude that only the third term in Eq. 10a is non-zero, which means that the third term introduces the effect of relative phase on the final obtained beam quality value. If we rewritten Eq. 10b as:

σzx2=x2IdxdyIdxdy,(19a)
σzy2=y2IdxdyIdxdy,(19b)

Eq. 7b becomes independent of the relative phase. Replacing the calculation equation of the second moment Eq. 10a with Eq. 19a, the calculated M2 factor is only dependent on the power content of LP11 mode, and the influence of relative phase on the M2 factor is eliminated. By employing Eq. 19b, the influence of the last two terms in Eqs 5, 6, representing the mode interference, disappears, and the remaining terms is the same as the incoherent case. For the case that the modes are superposited incoherently, the gravity center of the beam is zero, Eq. 10b reduce to the form of Eq. 19a, and the modified M2 factor in coherently superposited cases is coincident with those of the classical M2 factor in incoherently superposited cases, which means that the ideal value for the modified M2 factor is still very close to 1. In conclusion, the modified M2 factor calculated from Eqs 7a, 19b can be used to evaluate the high power narrow linewidth fiber lasers.

3 Numerical simulations

For high power fiber lasers, nonlinear effects are the main limitation for power scaling, which is stronger for higher laser intensity [39]. Generally, fibers with larger core diameter have been employed to reduce the laser intensity in fiber core. However, the number of the supported modes in the core increases as the core diameter increases, which renders the fiber lasers into multimode operation, and undermines the beam quality [40]. To realize high power laser while maintaining near diffraction limited beam quality, a core diameter of 30 μm is generally used [4147]. So the exemplary fiber that will be considered here has an ideal step-index profile with a 30 μm core and a core NA of 0.065, which was chosen to be representative of a commercially-available LMA fiber and to validate the analysis in the former section. For high power narrow linewidth fiber lasers, the wavelength is generally located at 1064nm, and the laser wavelength used in simulation is chosen to be 1064 nm. The bend loss as a function of the bend radius for different modes is shown in Figure 1, which is calculated using the method of Marcuse [48]. An additional correction factor, yielding an effective bending diameter, has been employed to incorporate the material stress-optic effect [49]. It shows that even with the bend radius of 10cm, the bend loss for LP21 mode is significantly large, which is about 100 dB/m, which means that higher order mode can be stripped efficiently by coiling the fibers. For common fiber laser package of low NA LMA step index fiber, the bend radius of fiber is not larger than 10 cm to mitigating mode instability [6, 14], so it is reasonable to consider only the LP01 and LP11 mode.

FIGURE 1
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FIGURE 1. Bend loss vs. bend radius for different modes of a 0.065 NA fiber with a 30-μm-core at 1064 nm.

We first calculated the M2 factor by using the classical definition. The fiber mode profiles at the fiber output were propagated a distance from the initial plane (z = 0) by using the angular spectrum propagation method, which is based on fast Fourier Transform algorithm [50, 51]. Then several beam parameters of interest, such as second moment of the beam intensity profile and beam gravity centroid, can be calculated directly from the intensity distribution at the initial plane and distant plane, which are used to calculate the M2 factor through Eqs 7a, 8a, 8b, 8c. The M2 factor (in x and y direction) as a function of the LP11 fraction and the relative phase is calculated, which is shown in Figure 2. It is shown that the value of M2 factor is dependent on the LP11 fraction and the relative phase, and M2 is less than 1.1 even with the LP11 fraction as high as 0.35. It is indicated in [52] that the power in the bucket is dependent on the LP11 fraction, which means that even M2 < 1.1 can not guarantee excellent long-distance propagation properties or high energy concentration for narrow width fiber laser, and that the M2 factor can not reflect the mode content and is unsuitable to verify good propagation properties of a LMA fiber.

FIGURE 2
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FIGURE 2. M2 as a function of LP11 fraction and relative phase for x direction (A) and y direction (B), M2 as a function of LP11 fraction for the case that the relative phase is 0 (C).

Employing the modified calculation, the modified M2 factor as a function of relative phase and power fraction is presented in Figure 3. It can be seen from Figure 3A that the calculated M2 factor is independent of the uncontrollable relative phase, which validate the predication in the theoretical analysis in Section 2. It also reveals in Figure 3B that the calculated modified M2 factor increases linearly with the increase of high order mode content, which means that the M2 factor can be used to evaluate the beam quality or mode content of the laser from low NA, LMA fibers. With modified M2 factor being less than 1.1, the power fraction of LP11 mode content is less than 3%. In Figure 3B, the modified My2 value is constant with a change in the LP11 fraction. This is due to that M2 value in the y direction is nearly the same for LP01 mode and LP11 mode [20], and the modified My2 value is a weighted superposition of the M2 value for LP01 mode and LP11 mode.

FIGURE 3
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FIGURE 3. Beam quality factor of the coherent mixture of LP01 and LP11 modes, as a function of the relative phase (A) and higher order mode content (B).

The calculated M2 factor as a function of power fraction is presented in Figure 4, in which the modes are superposited incoherently for the cases of broadband fiber lasers. Both classical and modified M2 factor is used to evaluate the beam quality, which indicates that there is no difference in the two methods for the case that the modes are superposited incoherently. One can conclude that the modified M2 factor is suitable for evaluating the beam quality of the fiber laser whenever the modes are superposited coherently or incoherently, which means that the methods can be employed in broader applications, not only restricted to evaluate the narrow linewidth fiber lasers but also the broadband ones. Due to that the modification is only made on the calculation of the second moment of the beam intensity profile, the modified M2 can be used in the conventional measuring instrument except for updating the calculating software programs.

FIGURE 4
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FIGURE 4. Beam quality factor of the incoherent mixture of LP01 and LP11 modes.

4 Conclusion

We have presented a modification to the M2 factor for high power narrow linewidth lasers from low NA, LMA fibers. The modified M2 factor eliminates the influence of the uncontrollable relative phase by ignoring the gravity center in the calculation of the beam intensity profile second moment, and the one-to-one mapping between the M2 factor and the mode content has been restored, which make the M2 factor can be employed to characterize the mode content even for the narrow linewidth fiber lasers. It is demonstrated numerically that the modification to M2 factor can reflect the mode content, and the M2 factor → 1 means that less high order mode are contained in the laser beam. With the new calculation method, the power fraction of LP11 mode is less than 3% when the modified M2 parameter is less than 1.1. The results can be used to improve the method to measure the beam quality of high power fiber lasers.

Data availability statement

The raw data supporting the conclusion of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Author contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the study and approved it for publication.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (61905226), and the Youth Talent Climbing Foundation of the Laser Fusion Research Center.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Keywords: high power fiber lasers, large mode area fiber, few-mode fiber, beam quality, laser beam propagation

Citation: Tao R, Huang L, Li M, Shen B, Feng X, Xie L, Weng J and Zhi D (2023) M2 factor for evaluating fiber lasers from large mode area few-mode fibers. Front. Phys. 11:1082086. doi: 10.3389/fphy.2023.1082086

Received: 27 October 2022; Accepted: 02 February 2023;
Published: 22 February 2023.

Edited by:

Bertrand Kibler, UMR6303 Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Carnot de Bourgogne (ICB), France

Reviewed by:

Jingjing Zheng, Beijing Jiaotong University, China
Koustav Dey, National Institute of Technology Warangal, India
Murugan Senthil Mani Rajan, Anna University, India

Copyright © 2023 Tao, Huang, Li, Shen, Feng, Xie, Weng and Zhi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Dong Zhi, emhpZG9uZ0BjYXJkYy5jbg==

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