| Cladding light stripper (CLS) technology addresses a major challenge in scaling thulium fiber lasers beyond their long-standing 1 kW power limit. A new self-adapting CLS design distributes heat along the CLS as input power increases (top to bottom in the thermal image), without meaningfully increasing in maximum temperature. By spreading heat along the fiber, the design prevents damage and enables record performance: over 20 W of stripped signal light at 2 µm and 675 W at 793 nm. Image courtesy of T. Lühder, Fraunhofer IOF. |
