system
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human
How much light can be pumped into a fiber optic cable?

I've been working with fiber optic cabling for data at work, and it is pretty neat stuff, but i don't know that much about the technical end of it.

I was thinking about how fiber optics could be used as a light pipe for an intense white light source (i think there are some surgical headlamps built like this)

I understand collimators would be required at both ends to focus the light into the cable, and then to disperse the light into a usable beam.

What sort of things would limit the amount of light that could be pumped into the fiber? If i were to light up the cable assembly with a 50W source, would there be anything from stopping me using a 500W source? Would the fiber completely saturate and be unable to transmit more light at some point?

Assuming the cable is glass, standard diameter (62.5uM).

Thanks.
gpt
You might run into problems just coupling the light into the fiber honestly. Fiber-optic couplers are just lenses fixed some distance to the connector, and the coupling is rarely ever perfect. Even if it got in without loss or melting the front end, you might run into issues with thermal lensing in the fiber itself at high enough power. Other than that, you'd probably start running into thermal damage due to absorption in the cladding (which is how CW lasers usually cause problems). 

That being said, there are fiber lasers these days that are well in excess of kW power (they're mostly used for industrial cutting and welding), so with good engineering, you can put a LOT of power into a fiber.