Azimuthally polarized, passively Q-switched Yb-doped fiber laser

An azimuthally polarized and passively Q-switched ytterbium-doped fiber laser was demonstrated. With the involvement of a single lens inside the laser resonator, a birefringent crystal was used as the polarization discriminator, and a Cr4+ :YAG crystal acted as the saturable absorber and also the output coupler. For the simplicity and low optical loss of the resonator cavity, this fiber laser emitted azimuthally polarized pulse with a high slope efficiency of 72.6% and high average power of 4.11 W. The laser pulse had 132-ns duration and 112-kHz repetition rate at the absorbed pump power of 6.40W. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved