Pulse-amplitude-equalized output from a rational harmonic mode-locked fiber laser

We report, for the first time to our knowledge, the demonstration of amplitude equalization of high-repetition-rate pulses generated from a rational harmonic mode-locked Er-doped fiber laser. The output pulses are injected into another fiber laser with a nonlinear optical loop mirror. This scheme provides pulse-amplitude equalization up to the ninth rational harmonic mode-locked pulse train.     

Modulator‐Free Coherent‐One‐Way Quantum Key Distribution

Time‐bin encoding is an attractive method for transmitting photonic qubits over long distances with minimal decoherence. It allows a simple receiver for quantum key distribution (QKD) that extracts a key by measuring time of arrival of photons and detects eavesdropping by measuring interference of pulses in different time bins. In the past, coherent pulses have been generated using a CW laser and an intensity modulator. A greatly simplified transmitter is proposed and demonstrated here that works by directly modulating the laser diode. Coherence between pulses is maintained by a weak seed laser. The modulator‐free source creates time‐bin encoded pulses with a high extinction ratio (29.4 dB) and an interference visibility above 97 %. The resulting QKD transmitter gives estimated secure key rates up to 4.57 Mbit/s, the highest yet reported for coherent‐one‐way QKD, and can be programmed for all protocols using weak coherent pulses.     

Mode-locked He-Ne laser pulse compression and expansion

By means of an electro-optic internal modulator it is possible to obtain from a laser He-Ne recurring pulses whose duration (about 500 psec) is the inverse of the Ne amplifying spectral bandwidth. The optical frequency of these pulses, passing through an external modulator is translated or linearly modulated. The duration of the linear frequency modulated pulses, whose spectrum is widely broadened, is then reduced by travels into a dispersive interferometric structure (optical dispersive delay line). A pulse compression ratio at least equal to 3 has been obtained.     

Mode locking of argon ion laser by use of cylindrical ultrasonic waves

The phenomenon of light diffraction by a cylindrical ultrasonic wave has been investigated. The diffraction was applied in a new type of acousto-optic modulator used for laser mode locking. The paper describes the modulator and presents results on mode locking of argon ion laser. The mode locking was obtained by means of a cylindrical acoustic wave launched in water at the frequencies of ultrasound 33-34 MHz. A standing wave regime of operation of the modulator resulted in a reliable generation of laser pulses with the duration 720 ps.     

Red picosecond pulses generated by frequency doubling a Raman amplified widely tunable 1.3 microm fiber ring laser

We generated 0.66 microm picosecond pulses by second-harmonic generation of the Raman amplified output of a 1.3 microm actively mode-locked fiber ring laser in a periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate (PPKTP) waveguide. The ring laser produced 9 ps pulses at a 20 GHz repetition frequency, was tunable over 1284-1330 nm, and was based on a semiconductor optical amplifier and a Mach-Zehnder amplitude modulator. The Raman amplifier served both to amplify the ring laser and to compress the pulses as solitons. The spectral flexibility of the amplifiers and the modulator should enable similar configurations to be made at other wavelengths and facilitate efficient frequency doubling in waveguides to other visible wavelengths.     

A study of a Q-switched double-clad ytterbium-doped fiber laser with amplifying effect

A high repetition rate ytterbium-doped double-clad (YDDC) fiber laser with amplifying effect is described by using acousto-optic modulator. The characteristic of Q-switched pulses are studied with accurate control of opening gate time of modulator. The stable Q-switched pulses with tens of nanoseconds width can be observed at high repetition rate varied from 50 kHz to 500 kHz using this laser. The stable operation area of the Q-switched fiber laser is discussed and the analysis results agree well with that of the experiment.     

Simple electro-optic technique to generate temporally flat-top laser pulses

A simple technique is presented to generate temporally flat-top shaped laser pulses using electro-optic modulator (Pockels cell). It involves splitting of input laser pulse into two halves of equal intensity and then stacking together with appropriate optical delay to get a temporally flat-top laser pulse. It also allows generation of other pulse shapes by varying the relative intensity, delay, and phase between two halves of the input laser pulse. Temporally flat-top laser pulses of duration ~ 9 ns have been generated using ~ 7 ns duration incident laser pulses from a flash lamp pumped Q-switched Nd:glass laser oscillator. The rise and fall-time of the shaped pulse is limited by speed of electro-optic switch (Pockels cell), which is ~ 2 ns in the present case.     

二极管侧面泵浦声光诱导单向运转的Nd：YLF环形腔激光器

在半导体激光阵列侧面泵浦的Ｎｄ：ＹＬＦ激光器中，利用声光调制器控制激光单向运转，消除空间烧孔效应，获得单纵模输出，通过预激光调Ｑ获得脉宽为５０ｎｓ，能量为１．２ｍＪ的单纵模输出，理论分析的结果在实验上得到很好的验证。     

Experimental study of a continuously pumped, actively mode-locked dye laser

Operation of a continuously pumped actively mode-locked dye laser is reported. Using a 250 MHz electrooptic modulator, a stable output of pulses as short as 10 ps has been generated. The pulse waveform has been investigated as a function of the detuning between the cavity transit time and the modulation period.     

Mode-locking of cw dye laser using externally modulated pumping laser

A new mode-locking method of tunable dye laser is described. This simple and practical method requires only an external intensity modulator to the pumping source. After the simple analytical considerations, the experimental work was done using an Ar laser pumped Rhodamin 6G dye laser and an acousto-optic modulator. As results, stable continuous trains of mode-locked pulses were obtained throughout in the ordinary lasing range 570–630 nm. The pulse width, estimated to be 30–50 ps by SHG autocorrelation measurements, is limited by the bandwidth of Lyot filter used. It is also shown experimentally that this method can be applicable for the suppression of the growth of double pulses in passive mode-locking with saturable absorber (DODCI).     

Intracavity-frequency-doubled Q-switched and mode-locked Nd:Lu0.15Y0.85VO4/KTP green laser with AO modulator and central SESAM

By using mixed crystal Nd:Lu_0.15Y_0.85VO₄ as laser medium, KTP as frequency-doubling crystal, a diode-pumped intracavity-frequency-doubled Q-switched and mode-locked (QML) Nd:Lu_0.15Y_0.85VO₄/KTP green laser with acousto-optic (AO) modulator and central semiconductor saturable absorption mirror (C-SESAM) is realized by using a V-type cavity. The QML laser characteristics such as the pulse width, single-pulse energy, have been measured for different modulation frequencies of the AO modulator. In comparison with the singly passively QML green laser with central SESAM, the doubly QML green laser can generate more stable and shorter pulses with higher peak power. Based on the coupled rate equations for a diode-pumped doubly QML green laser with AO and C-SESAM, in which the saturated absorption mechanism of C-SESAM is considered, the recurrence relation of the relative amplitude of the mode-locking pulses is given and the related numerical simulations are in good agreement with the experimental results.     

Gigahertz-repetition-rate mode-locked fiber laser for continuum generation

We report direct generation of <500-fs pulses at a 1-GHz rate from a self-starting passively mode-locked fiber laser by regeneratively synchronizing the pulses with a phase modulator. The pulses are amplified and passed through a dispersion-decreasing fiber and a normal-dispersion supercontinuum fiber. The resulting continuum is wider than 350 nm.     

Q-switched all-fibre laser using a fibre-optic resonant acousto-optic modulator

We report an actively Q-switched all-fibre laser using a fibre-optic resonant acousto-optic modulator as Q-switching element. The modulator consists of a short-length fibre Bragg grating modulated by a standing longitudinal elastic wave, being the grating length much shorter than the acoustic wavelength. Q-switch pulses were successfully obtained from an Er3+-doped fibre laser at repetition rates of 18 and 37 kHz.     

Generation of shaped ultraviolet pulses at the third harmonic of titanium-sapphire femtosecond laser radiation

We experimentally demonstrate a method to generate shaped femtosecond laser pulses in the ultraviolet at a central wavelength of 267 nm, the third harmonic of conventional titanium-sapphire femtosecond laser systems. Employing a 128-pixel liquid-crystal spatial light modulator, we impose variable spectral phase modulations upon the near-infrared laser pulses. By this, complex laser pulses can be shaped whose overall spectrum is still conserved. Our experiments show that it is possible to easily transfer these pulses into the ultraviolet at 267 nm via sum-frequency mixing in nonlinear crystals and to predictably generate multistructured ultraviolet femtosecond laser pulses. We analyze the temporal and spectral composition of these pulses after frequency conversion into the ultraviolet using difference-frequency cross-correlation and XFROG (cross-correlation frequency-resolved optical gating) techniques with an unmodulated fundamental laser pulse. The method can be employed to facilitate adaptive quantum control experiments in the ultraviolet wavelength regime, where the major absorption bands of many organic molecular systems are located. PACS 42.65.Re; 42.72.Bj; 32.80.Qk     

有理数谐波锁模光纤激光器中脉冲幅度的均衡

提出了一种在有理数谐波锁模光纤激光器中实现脉冲幅度均衡的新方法，让脉冲在腔内循环-圈中往复通过调制器两次，使调制器在腔内既作为锁模器件又作为脉冲幅度均衡器件。用时域分析的方法证明这种结构在调制器工作在其特性曲线的线性区时可以实现5阶以下有理数谐波锁模的脉冲幅度均衡。实验中在调制频率约2GHz时验证了理论分析的结果。     

Characteristic of pulsed fiber laser induced by switching time

Laser-diode pumped Q-switched ytterbium-doped switching time of acousto-optic modulator （AOM） fiber laser is studied experimentally by controlling the The characteristics of Q-switched pulses with different rise time of AOM regulated by the laser beam size along the window of AOM are presented. Meanwhile, the behaviors of Q-switched pulses are achieved by regulating the switching time of AOM. The singlerepetition-rate and half-repetition-rate phenomena are described and discussed. The experimental results confirm that the fiber laser with lower level inversion population can be more easily operated for half- repetition-rate generation.     

用于激光聚变驱动器的全光纤、全固化光脉冲产生系统

报道一种全固化、全光纤的用于高功率激光驱动的惯性约束聚变驱动器的光脉冲产生系统,采用单纵模振荡器输出连续激光信号,经过相位调制器和振幅调制器,得到一个时间波形上已整形且具有一定带宽(约0.1 nm)的激光脉冲,经光纤放大器放大并经光纤分束器分束后同时输出四路激光脉冲,各路激光脉冲先通过时间同步调整单元精确控制时间同步关系后,经可编程光纤衰减器调节各路之间的功率平衡后再通过光纤放大器做进一步放大并通过150 m光纤传输输出至预放系统.该光纤系统可输出0.3—20 ns、带宽0.1 nm、能量数纳焦的几乎任意 关键词： 激光聚变驱动器 前端 光纤激光系统     

Electro-optic periodically poled lithium niobate Bragg modulator as a laser Q-switch

We report an electro-optic Bragg modulator using a periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) crystal. We measured a half-wave voltage of 160 V when transmitting a 1064 nm laser through a 14.2 mm long, 780 microm thick, 20.13 microm period PPLN crystal at the Bragg angle. We also demonstrated a Q-switched Nd:YVO(4) laser using such a PPLN Bragg modulator as its Q-switch, producing 7.8 ns, 201 microJ pulses at a 10 kHz repetition rate when pumped by a 19.35 W diode laser at 808 nm.     

Actively mode-locked visible upconversion fiber laser

Active mode locking of a Pr(3+)/Yb (3+) -doped upconversion fluoride fiber laser with an all-fiber ZnO acousto-optic phase modulator is demonstrated for the first time to the authors' knowledge. Optical pulses of ~550-ps duration with a repetition rate of 239 MHz at a wavelength of 635 nm have been generated.     

High-repetition-rate picosecond pulse generation at 1.5 microm by intracavity laser frequency modulation

We propose and experimentally demonstrate generation of transform-limited pulse trains at a 2.5-GHz repetition rate from a frequency-modulated erbium-ytterbium bulk glass laser by using an intracavity lithium niobate phase modulator and an external fiber Bragg grating filter. Light pulses with durations tunable from 40 to 80 ps and 0.2-mW fiber-coupled average power at 1535 nm have been obtained.