A Room-Temperature Multiwavelength Erbium-Doped Fibre Laser by Exploiting Polarization Hole Burning

Multiwavelength operation of a linear cavity erbium-doped fibre laser (EDFL) is proposed and demonstrated. A 3-dB fibre loop mirror and a high birefringence (HiBi) fibre loop mirror are utilized as the cavity reflectors. By utilizing the wavelength-dependent polarization rotation induced by the HiBi fibre loop mirror and by using a fibre polarizer to control the intracavity polarization state, the polarization states of different wavelengths are diversified. Therefore, the polarization hole burning (PHB) effect has been greatly enhanced and the homogeneous broadening of erbium-doped fibre is suppressed to a large extent. By simply tuning a polarization controller, we experimentally obtained simultaneous lasing of four and five wavelengths with wavelength spacing of ～1.8nm and less than 2nm at room temperature, respectively. The repeated scans show that all of these lasers have good stability.     

Switchable Dual－Wavelength Mode－Locked Er－Doped Fibre Laser Using a Bragg Grating in Polarization－Maintaining Fibre

A simple actively mode-locked fibre ring laser is proposed and successfully demonstrated to generate switchable dual-wavelength picosecond pulses using a Bragg grating in a polarization-maintaining fibre. The wavelength spacing specified by the grating is only 0.52nm. The proposed laser can be made to operate in stable dualwavelength or switch between wavelengths at room temperature, only by simple adjustment of a polarization controller.     

Multiwavelength Dispersion-Tuned Actively Mode-Locked Erbium-Doped Fibre Ring Laser with Gain Competition Suppression

Multiwavelength dispersion-tuned actively mode-locked erbium-doped fibre ring laser is demonstrated by incorporating a section of highly nonlinear fibre （HNLF） in the laser cavity. The HNLF and the time gate element （modulator） in the fibre laser successfully suppress the gain competition in the erbium-doped fibre, and thus enable multiwavelength operation. Simultaneous generation of 10 GHz pulses up to eight different wavelengths is achieved. Wavelength, spacing and modes number tuning are investigated by changing fibre cavity length, dispersion, and erbium-doped fibre amplifier power, respectively.     

Multi-Wavelength Erbium-Doped Fibre Lasers on Assistance of High-Nonlinear Photonic-Crystal Fibres

On the basis of self-stability effect of four-wave mixings （FWMs） in high-nonlinear photonic-crystal fibres, a novel multi-wavelength erbium-doped fibre （EDF） laser is proposed and demonstrated experimentally at room temperature. The proposed lasers have the capacity of switching and tuning with excellent uniformity and stability. By means of adjusting the attenuators, the triple-, four-, or five-wavelength EDF lasers can be lasing simultaneously. With the assistance of the FWM self-stability function, the multi-wavelength spectrum is excellently stabilized with uniformity less than 0.9dB.     

Realization of Stable Narrow Linewidth Dual-Wavelength Lasing in an Erbium-Doped Fibre Laser by Cleaving the Wavelength-Selective Filter Spectrum

We propose and demonstrate a new concept of stable narrow-line-width and close wavelength spacing dualwavelength lasing in an Er-doped fibre ring laser （EDFRL） by cleaving the spectrum with a wavelength-selective component in the EDFRL. A fibre loop mirror （FLM） combining with a polarization controller （PC） acts as the cleaver. The cleaver can produce a fine pectinate spectrum. By adjusting the PC, the fine pectinate spectrum can be so changeable that cleaving the spectrum of a fibre Bragg grating （FBG） into two parts. As a result, we obtain the dual-wavelength fibre lasering with a bandwidth of only 0.03nm and a wavelength spacing of only 0.07nm. Furthermore, the laser can also perform stable switchable single wavelength or stable different-bandwidth dual-wavelength by carefully adjusting the PC at room temperature.     

A l15-W Ytterbium-Doped Fibre Laser

We report a highly efficient ytterbium-doped double-clad fibre laser, one-end pumped by a 975-nm diode stacksource and generating up to 115.6 W of cw output power at 1.1 μm. The maximum optical-to-optical conversionefficiency with respect to the launched pump power is 79% at 65-W output power, and the overall slope efficiencyis about 69%.     

Equal-Amplitude Optical Pulse Generation from a Rational Harmonic Mode-Locked Fibre Laser

A simple technique for the generation of equal-amplitude high repetition rate pulses from a rational harmonic mode-locked fibre ring laser is demonstrated. The principle is based on the combination of the nonlinear characteristics of the modulator and the effect of rational harmonic mode-locking. The two sources act on each other and the integrated effect eventually leads to the pulse amplitude-equalization. We obtain amplitude-equalized short pulses up to the fifth-order rational harmonic mode-locking with an optimum bias level and modulation depth of the modulator, which demonstrates the efficiency of this method.     

A Novel Bi-wavelength Method for Accurately Measuring Gain and Noise Characteristics of an Erbium-Doped Fibre Amplifier for Multi-Channel Wavelength Division Multiplexing Transmission

Gain and noise figure (NF) are the most important two parameters of an erbium-doped fibre amplifier (EDFA) for a multi-channel wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission system. A simple bi-wavelength method for accurate gain and NF spectrum measurement of EDFA for WDM applications is proposed. A saturating input signal, whose power equals to the sum of all the WDM signal power and whose wavelength is determined by the channel numbers and the wavelength of the WDM input signals, saturates the EDFA in a degree as the same as the WDM signals input. Meanwhile, a small power probe signal scans and measures the gain and the NF value at every wavelength of the WDM input signals. Investigative results by numerical simulation show that the gain and the NF spectra measured by this method have good agreement with the real spectra of the WDM signal input in a large total input power range. The maximum errors of the gain and the NF are less than 0.2 dB and 0.16dB, respectively, for a 50-channel input case. The method is competent for the accurate gain and the NF spectrum measurement of the fibre preamplifier and the line-amplifier for WDM applications and has the advantages of simplicity, convenience and easy implement.     

可调谐锁模脉冲环形腔掺铒光纤激光器

报道了一种结构简单、波长稳定可调的被动锁模环形腔掺铒光纤激光器.利用非线性偏振旋转效应作为等效可饱和吸收体实现自起振被动锁模,通过使用光纤偏振控制器和偏振相关光隔离器作为波长调谐器件,在输出端使用输出耦合器为工作波长在1550±50 nm的宽带耦合器,实现了光纤激光器的输出锁模脉冲激光中心波长较宽范围可调谐.实验上获得了低阈值自起振,重复频率为10.23 MHz,中心波长在1548.64～1600.24 nm内连续可调,边模抑制比大于44 dB的超短脉冲输出.     

基于非线性偏振旋转效应的多波长光纤激光器

多波长光纤激光器是未来波分复用光通信系统的理想光源,提出和展示了一个基于非线性偏振旋转效应的多波长光纤激光器,非线性偏振旋转诱导的强度相关非均匀损耗能有效地抑制均匀加宽增益介质掺铒光纤中的模式竞争,从而使光纤激光器在室温下产生稳定的多波长输出,实验实现了最多18个波长的多波长输出.另外,此激光器没有使用传统的滤波器,而是在激光腔内插入一段保偏光纤,保偏光纤与偏振相关隔离器构成一等效Lyot双折射光纤周期性滤波器.利用这种在线型的双折射光纤滤波器简化了光纤激光器的结构,使它更易于集成.还实验研究了多波长输出随抽运功率的演化,发现抽运功率对多波长的均匀性影响很大.