Mitigation of photodarkening effect in Yb-doped fiber through Na⁺ ions doping

In this work, Na⁺ ions doping into the Yb-doped fiber is proposed to improve the photo-darkening resistance. The results show that the photo-darkening induced excess loss at equilibrium state at 633nm, 702 nm, 810 nm, and 1041 nm is 115.54dB/m, 86.87dB/m, 25.51 dB/m, 2.92 dB/m, respectively, when co-doping with Na⁺ ions. More than 30% excess loss is reduced comparing to the Yb-doped fiber without Na⁺ ions. The mechanism of Na⁺ ions doping to mitigate the PD excess loss is discussed. Besides, we measured the laser efficiency of Yb/Al/Na co-doped fiber to be 76.1%. This result remains almost the same with Yb-doped fiber and proves that the addition of Na⁺ ions do not deteriorate the fiber slope efficiency. The background loss of the two fibers also stays close. The results indicate this method is promising in high power fiber laser development.