Fiber Lasers: Contemporary Trends

Dear Colleagues,

Compared with conventional (e.g., traditional solid-state) lasers, fiber lasers have unique advantages in terms of performance (remarkable compactness and robustness, inherently high beam quality, easy conversion of low-brightness diode-pump light to high-brightness output, excellent heat dissipation, versatility of operational regimes obtainable, etc.). The success of fiber lasers has largely been grounded on the excellent characteristics of optical fibers employed, both as active media and passive components, which they are based on. Historically, fiber lasers have been developed rapidly owing to the interest in their unique characteristics, which massively strengthen their application in practical needs areas. Regarding the latter, it should be noted note that the global market for fiber lasers continuously grew during the two past decades and has nowadays exceeded 50% of the whole market of industrial lasers. This trend appears to be a natural consequence of the given diversity of applications of fiber lasers, with uses in: material processing, telecommunications, biological imaging, medicine, molecular spectroscopy, LIDAR, remote sensing, high-resolution spectroscopy, gravitational wave detection, military counter measures, spaceborne missions, scientific applications and so on.

This Issue of Applied Sciences will focus on the most recent developments of different types of fiber lasers, giving a comprehensive overview of the current state of the art, including the latest advances, of their key representatives. It will also outline the application prospects and development tendencies vs. the technical challenges still existing in the field. It will thus presents a broad view on the matter of fiber lasers, and will hopefully provide utility, not only for the professionals involved in the area but also for the scholars contributing to it in the near future.

The main topics to be covered in the Issue are as follows: power scaling and wavelength-expanding NIR (1.0–1.7-μm) fiber lasers based on active fibers doped with rare-earth ions (Nd³⁺, Yb³⁺, Er³⁺, Yb³⁺-Er³⁺) and transitional metals (e.g., Bi); silica- or non-silica-based fiber lasers for ~2-μm (Tm³⁺, Ho³⁺, Tm³⁺-Ho³⁺) and 2.7–3.5-μm (Er³⁺, Ho³⁺, Ho³⁺-Pr³⁺, Dy³⁺) regions; fiber lasers operating in versatile pulsed regimes (Q-switching, mode-locking, gain-switching); single-frequency (low-noise, narrow-linewidth, high-coherence) and multi-wavelength (employing optical filtering, intensity-dependent loss, ultrafast nonlinear optical response, dual-cavity structure, multiple Brillouin scattering) fiber lasers; supercontinuum generation and frequency comb; Raman and Brillouin (including ultrafast) fiber lasers; random (low-coherence) fiber lasers (using feedback in disordered emission-active structures and random fiber Bragg gratings); soliton fiber lasers (exploiting temporal bright, dark, vector, dissipative solitons); self-sweeping fiber lasers (operating on the principle of dynamic induced gratings generated in the gain fiber); the related issues—noise features, enhancing output beam quality and diminishing fiber nonlinearities and other parasitic effects (optical damage, modal instabilities, photodarkening).

Prof. Dr. Alexander V. Kir'yanov
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• fiber lasers
• nir and mid-IR fiber laser sources
• operational regimes
• applications
• nonlinear optical effects
• fiber components