Highly efficient temporally stable narrow linewidth cryogenically cooled Yb-fiber laser

Cryogenic cooling is an effective way of increasing the efficiency in many solid-state lasers. In fiber lasers however, while the efficiency is increased, a reduced reabsorption in combination with reduced homogeneous broadening tends to broaden the linewidth, yielding a low spectral power density of the laser emission. In this work we lock a cryogenically-cooled Yb-doped fiber laser with a volume Bragg grating to overcome this problem and achieve a temporally stable narrow linewidth highly efficient laser. We extract 11.4-W of output power in spectral window of less than 0.4-nm with 14.5-W of launched pump light.