The research progress of highly RE-doped silica fibers and short-cavity fiber lasers

Short cavity single frequency fiber lasers and high repetition rate passive mode-locked fiber lasers based on high gain rare earth doped fibers have important applications in industrial, medical, and military fields. Quartz based optical fibers have application advantages such as low loss and easy fusion, but the low doping concentration of rare earth ions results in low unit gain of the fiber and limited performance of short cavity lasers. In recent years, with the continuous deepening of basic research on rare earth doped quartz glass and the significant improvement of fiber preparation methods and processes, rare earth doped quartz fibers for short cavity laser applications have been developed and applied one after another. The performance of short cavity lasers in various bands has been significantly improved, and the application potential is constantly released. Therefore, this article takes quartz fibers doped with different rare earth ions and their short cavity laser applications as the main line, systematically reviews and analyzes the latest development and application progress of highly doped rare earth quartz fibers, and looks forward to their next development direction.