Cladding-pumped Raman fiber amplifier for high-gain, high-energy single-stage amplification

A cladding-pumped Raman-fiber amplifier for single-mode pulses is demonstrated. A small-signal gain of nearly 50 dB is reached at 1663 nm. The use of multimode pump pulses opens up for high-energy pulse amplification. We obtain a power-conversion-efficiency of 36%.