Random fiber laser directly pumped by a high-power laser diode.

A random lasing based on Rayleigh scattering (RS) in a passive fiber directly pumped by a high-power laser diode (LD) has been demonstrated. Owing to the RS-based random distributed feedback (RDFB) the low-quality LD beam (938 nm) is converted into the high-quality laser output (980 nm). Because of the relatively low excess above the threshold with the available LD, the RDFB laser output is not stationary and limited in power at the 0.5 W level. In the used gradient-index fiber, the output beam has 4.5 lower divergence as compared with the pump beam thus demonstrating a new way for development of high-power fiber lasers with high-quality output.