Broadband and high-brightness light source: glass-clad Ti:sapphire crystal fiber

High-brightness near-infrared broadband amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) was generated by glass-clad Ti:sapphire crystal fibers, which were developed using the co-drawing laser-heated pedestal growth method. As much as 29.2 mW of ASE power was generated using 520 nm laser diodes as the excitation source on an a-cut, 18 mu m core-diameter Ti: sapphire crystal fiber (CF). The 3 dB bandwidth was 163.8 nm, and the radiance was 53.94 W.mm(-2) sr(-1). The propagation loss of the glass-clad sapphire CF measured using the cutback method was 0.017 cm(-1) at 780 nm. For single-mode applications, more than 100 mu W of power was coupled into a SM600 single-mode fiber. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America