Multiple-cavity fiber optic lasers are fabricated with high- gain fibers in low-loss, high-finesse fiber ferrule resonance cavity configurations supported in low-loss ferrule alignment fixtures developed for use in FFP filters. These lasers incorporate rare-earth doped, sensitized glass fiber as the active medium within FFP cavities. FFP lasers of this invention include those exhibiting single-frequency and/or single-polarization mode operation with wide mode separation. Lasers provided include those with short cavity lengths, where the longest of the cavities of can be less than or equal to about 10 mm in length. These FFP laser sources are fixed-frequency or discretely- tunable. Multiple- cavity configurations in which at least one of the cavities formed contains active fiber are readily formed in fiber ferrule assemblies. FFP lasers can be end-pumped using single- or double- pass pumping configuration or pump resonance cavity configurations. Compound cavity FFP lasers of this invention can be readily and conveniently combined with fiber amplifiers to increase fiber laser output power. Ferrule assemblies and alignment fixtures afford simple, high-precision fiber alignment which is stable as a function of cavity tuning and over reasonable device operating temperatures.
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