Conclusion

The compactness and efficiency of fiber lasers, combined with remarkable performance in terms of power and beam quality, have led to a large number of applications, both scientific and industrial. In particular, ytterbium-doped fiber technology is now mature industrially, and the performance of transverse single-mode laser sources achieved with these fibers is quite close to the fundamental physical limits, whether in continuous or pulsed mode. Future advances in sources may come from new fiber technologies, such as multi-core fibers, hollow-core fibers, or large modal area fibers that are less sensitive to the external environment. These radiation sources are also advancing through their implementation in sometimes sophisticated architectures that allow increasingly fine control of their temporal, spectral, spatial, or polarization properties. Recent examples include advances in injectors...