Efficient yellow Dy:ZBLAN fiber laser with high-brightness diode-pumping at 450 nm.

We report on a low-threshold efficient yellow Dy-fiber laser with good beam quality featuring high-brightness pumping. It employs a single-clad 0.2 mol% Dy:ZBLAN fiber pumped by two 450-nm blue GaN laser diodes. The continuous-wave Dy-fiber laser delivers a maximum output power of 109 mW at 575 nm with a laser threshold of 218 mW, a slope efficiency of 19.6%, and beam quality factors M2 x,y ∼ 1.5. The overall optical efficiency versus incident pump power is 13.9%, being record-high, to the best of our knowledge, for this type of laser. The laser performance is simulated based on the spectroscopic data, being in good agreement with the experiment.