30  W fluoride glass all-fiber laser at 2.94  μm

We report the demonstration of a 2938 nm erbium-doped fluoride glass fiber laser delivering a record output power of 30.5 W in continuous wave operation. The passively cooled all-fiber laser cavity based on intracore fiber Bragg gratings has an overall laser efficiency of 16% as a function of the launched pump power at 980 nm and a single-mode output beam quality of M²<1.2. This power scaling demonstration of a fiber laser operating near the vibrational resonance of water is likely to have a significant impact on several biomedical applications.