new set of applications for fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs), operating at power levels that were previously thought impossible. In the case of a simple fiber laser, the FBGs can be used as the high reflector (HR) and output coupler (OC) to form the laser cavity. The gain for the laser is provided by a length of rare earth doped optical fiber, with the most common form using Yb3+ ions as the active lasing ion in the silica fiber. These Yb-doped fiber lasers first operated at the 1 kW CW power level in 2004 based on free space cavities but were not shown to operate with fiber Bragg grating cavities until much later. Such monolithic, all-fiber devices are produced by many companies worldwide and at power levels exceeding 1 kW. The major advantage of these all fiber systems, where the free space mirrors are replaced with a pair of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs), is the elimination of realignment during the life of the system, since the FBG is spliced directly to the doped fiber and never needs adjusting. The challenge is to operate these monolithic cavities at the kW CW power level in large mode area (LMA) fibers such as 20/400 (20 μm diameter core and 400 μm diameter inner cladding) without premature failures at the intra-cavity splice points and the gratings. Once optimized, these monolithic cavities do not need realignment during the life of the device, removing any cleaning and degradation of fiber surface from the maintenance schedule of the laser. However, the packaging and optimization of the splices and FBGs themselves are non-trivial at these power levels as are the matching of the various fibers, since the composition of the Yb-doped fiber and various passive and photosensitive fibers needs to be carefully matched across the entire fiber laser chain. Although the power handling capability of the fiber itself far exceeds this level, and is possibly as high as >30 kW CW, the practical limit is much lower due to component reliability and splice losses. Process of matching active and passive fibers In a double-clad fiber there are two waveguides – the Yb-doped core that forms the signal waveguide and the inner cladding waveguide for the pump light. The inner cladding of the active fiber is often shaped to scramble the cladding modes and increase pump overlap with the doped core. The matching of active and passive fibers for improved