Pump and signal combiners are being used in a wide range of applications, such as fiber laser and amplifier, telecommunication in industrial and biomedical areas, metrology, life science, imaging, quantum optics, and more.
To better understand a pump and signal combiner, you need to learn about pump combiners.
What is a Pump Combiner?
A pump combiner is originally a fiber-optic coupler designed to send pump and signal light into a fiber laser or fiber amplifier. It also goes by another name called pump couplers.
Certain fiber optic devices such as high-power fiber lasers and amplifiers are based on rare-earth doped double-clad fibers. In such devices, you can inject pump and signal light into such a fiber by simply focusing the light onto a bare fiber end.
The same thing is done for fiber amplifiers and fiber laser devices in the research stage. Industrial lasers are best if they are an all-fiber setup, where fiber-coupled pump laser diodes are directly connected to the active fiber via some passive transmission fibers, avoiding any air spaces in the path of the light signal.
When using multimode optic fibers, one needs fiber-optic pump combiners as they facilitate better robustness and stability of devices.
Some pump combiners can safely handle multiple kilowatts such as 10W or 30W, and they are called high-power pump combiners.
What is a pump and signal combiner?
A pump and signal combiner has two interfaces. On one interface, a fiber can be connected to a certain type of active fiber directly by using the fusion-splicing technique. Sometimes, there is an additional passive fiber between these two fibers to include a fiber Bragg grating if that cannot be written into an active fiber.
On the other interface, the combiner has several input multimode fibers that can be connected to fiber-coupled pump laser diodes. In addition, there is another single-mode fiber or a few-mode fiber for injection or extraction of the signal light. Though no signal light needs to be injected in the the case of a fiber laser, laser light needs to be extracted from one end.
Thus, when a pump combiner also has an additional fiber for signal light extraction or injection, it is referred to as a pump and signal combiner.
An (N+1) x1 pump and signal combiner can combine or couple N pump lasers and 1 signal channel into one fiber and create a high-power pump laser source.
What are the uses of pump-and-signal combiners?
The applications of pump and signal combiners have become very diverse and seeing even more expansion. Some of the most important uses and applications of pump and signal combiners are:
- Pumping of fiber lasers and amplifiers
- Pumping of fibers with multiple cores and large mode areas
- Pump combiner for elements Nd, & Yb, & Er & Ho & Tm-fiber
- Metrology
- Life science
- Quantum optics
- Gravitational wave detection – Atom cooling and trapping
- Imaging
- Industrial telecommunication
- Biomedical and more
To buy top-quality and affordable pump and signal combiners, please contact DK Photonics.