Polarization dependent nonlinear limitations in continuous-wave high power fiber amplifiers

We investigate the influence of seed polarization on nonlinear effects in a high power fiber amplifier for different orientations of the linear seed polarization and for different ellipticities of the seed polarization (linear, elliptic, circular polarized). We show that it was possible to considerably reduce the power of the Raman scattered light. Maximum reduction to around 50% could be achieved by changing the seed polarization from linear to circular. Furthermore, we demonstrate that not only the threshold of nonlinear effects could be influenced by changing the orientation of the linear seed polarization as only parameter but even the limiting effect could be changed: For all orientations of the linear seed polarization Raman scattering was the dominant nonlinear effect except for linear polarization along the slow fiber axis of the slightly birefringent amplifier fiber, where also modulation instability was observed. From our results we estimate the importance of the polarization state as further parameter to increase the nonlinear threshold of high power fiber amplifier systems.