title: Experimental research of a chain of diode pumped rubidium amplifiers.
abstract: In this paper, we have set up a diode pumped rubidium MOPA system with a chain of two amplifiers. The experimental results show an amplified laser power of 26W with amplification factor of 16.3 and power extraction efficiency of 53% for a single amplifier, and an amplified laser power of 11W with amplification factor of 7.9 and power extraction efficiency of 26% for a chain of two amplifiers. The reason for lower performance of cascade amplification is mainly due to the limited total pump power, which will be not sufficient for efficient pumping when assigned from a single amplifier into two amplifiers. The situation could be well improved by increasing the seed laser power as well as the pump power for each amplifier to realize high efficient saturated amplification. Such MOPA configuration has the potential for scaling high beam quality alkali laser into high powers.
authors.forename: Yunfei
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Weihong
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Hua
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Hongyan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Zining
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Xiaojun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xu