In this thesis, a scaleable, all-fiber ytterbium-doped amplifier system capable of producing high peak-power pulses while suppressing nonlinear effects is presented along with a model to support the development of such a system. This amplifier chain utilizes a single seed diode, which is current-driven to generate an optical pulse. The seed pulses are then amplified in a series of ytterbium-doped fiber amplifiers (YDFAs), which exploits nonlinear suppression techniques to produce high peak-power pulses without invoking deleterious nonlinear effects. Peak powers greater than 250kW with a pulse width of Ins and a repetition rate of 20kHz have been produced, as well as pulse energies of 650muJ with a pulse width of 10ns at 10kHz. |