A theoretical and experimental study on all-normal-dispersion Yb-doped mode-locked fiber lasers

We report on a theoretical and experimental study of an all-normal-dispersion (ANDi) Yb-doped mode-locked fiber laser, in which nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) is used to realize mode-locking without any dispersion compensation. Based on the coupled nonlinear Schrdinger (CNLS) equation, a model simulating the mode-locked process of an allnormal-dispersion ring fiber laser is developed, which shows that the achievement of stable mode-locking depends on the alignment of the polarization controller (PC) along the fast-polarization axis of the fiber, the birefringence intensity, and the net cavity dispersion. According to the theoretical analysis, stable mode-locked pulses with pulse duration 300 ps and average output power 33.9mW at repetition rate 36MHz are obtained.     

980-nm all-fiber mode-locked Yb-doped phosphate fiber oscillator based on semiconductor saturable absorber mirror and its amplifier

A 980-nm semiconductor saturable absorber mirror(SESAM) mode-locked Yb-doped phosphate fiber laser is demonstrated by using an all-fiber linear cavity configuration. Two different kinds of cavity lengths are introduced into the oscillator to obtain a robust and stable mode-locked seed source. When the cavity length is chosen to be 6 m, the oscillator generates an average output power of 3.5 m W and a pulse width of 76.27 ps with a repetition rate of 17.08 MHz. As the cavity length is optimized to short, 4.4-m W maximum output power and 61.15-ps pulse width are produced at a repetition rate of 20.96 MHz. The output spectrum is centered at 980 nm with a narrow spectral bandwidth of 0.13 nm. In the experiment, no undesired amplified spontaneous emission(ASE) nor harmful oscillation around 1030 nm is observed. Moreover,through a two-stage all-fiber-integrated amplifier, an output power of 740 m W is generated with a pulse width of 200 ps.