Simple tunable multiwavelength Brillouin/Erbium fiber laser utilizing short-length photonic crystal fiber

We have demonstrated a simple ring cavity tunable multiwavelength Brillouin/Erbium fiber laser (MWBEFL), in which 70 m highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber (HNL-PCF) is used as the Brillouin gain medium. The fiber laser utilizes recycling mechanism to enhance stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). The configuration that consists of only 3 optical components is easy to be integrated and improves the practicality. At the maximum 1480 nm pump power of 110 mW and the Brillouin pump power of 3 dBm, 10 stable output channels with more than 10 dB optical signal to noise ratio (OSNR) and 0.078 nm channel spacing could achieve 10 nm tuning ranges.     

Self-seeded multiwavelength Brillouin-erbium fiber laser

We propose and demonstrate a self-seeded multiwavelength Brillouin-erbium fiber laser with an internally self-excited Brillouin pump, which is achieved by incorporation of a length of single-mode fiber together with a Sagnac loop mirror into a fiber ring cavity. In this simple scheme the Brillouin pump is self-excited in the fiber ring cavity and then used to seed the Brillouin multiwavelength comb in the single-mode fiber. Stable generation of more than 120 Brillouin Stokes wavelengths with relatively uniform amplitudes is demonstrated with this scheme. It is also shown that such a self-seeded Brillouin laser has good stability and repeatability.     

Broadly tunable multiwavelength Brillouin-erbium fiber laser using a twin-core fiber coupler

A tunable multiwavelength Brillouin-erbium fiber laser (MW-BEFL) using a twin-core fiber (TCF) coupler is proposed and demonstrated. The TCF coupler is formed by splicing a section of TCF between two single-mode fibers. By simply applying bending curvature on the TCF coupler, the peak net gain is shifted close to the Brillouin pump (BP), which has advantage for suppressing self-lasing cavity modes with low-BP-power injection. In this work, the dependency of the Stokes signals tuning range on the free spectral range (FSR) of TCF coupler is studied. It is also found that the tuning range of MW-BEFL can exceed the FSR of TCF coupler by adopting proper BP power and 980-nm pump power. Up to 40 nm tuning range of MW-BEFL in the absence of self-lasing cavity modes is achieved.     

Flattening effect of four wave mixing on multiwavelength Brillouin-erbium fiber laser

A multiwavelength Brillouin-erbium fiber laser with enhanced output uniformity is demonstrated and its performance with and without the assistance of four wave mixing (FWM) is compared. The presence of FWM effect is proven by the generation of anti-Stokes wave and higher-order Stokes wave. This scheme is successful in flattening the multiwavelength output. At Brillouin pump wavelength of 1,550 nm, between the first and the last output channel, peak power differences of 4.59 and 8.32 dB are recorded for the scheme with and without the assistance of FWM, respectively. This represents 3.73 dB improvement in the multiwavelength output power uniformity.     

Double Brillouin frequency spaced multiwavelength Brillouin-erbium fiber laser with 50 nm tuning range

A 50 nm tuning range multiwavelength Brillouin-erbium fiber laser (MWBEFL) with double Brillouin frequency spacing is presented. Two separated gain blocks with symmetrical architecture, consisted by erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) and Brillouin gain media, are used to generate double Brillouin frequency spacing. The wider tuning range is realized by eliminating the self-lasing cavity modes existing in conventional MWBEFLs because of the absence of the physical mirrors at the ends of the linear cavity. The Brillouin pump (BP) is preamplified by the EDFA before entering the single-mode fiber (SMF), which leads to the reduction of threshold power and the generation enhancement of Brillouin Stokes (BS) signals. Four channels with 0.176 nm spacing are achieved at 2 mW BP power and 280 mW 980 nm pump power which can be tuned from 1525 to 1575 nm.     

Self-seeded multiwavelength Brillouin-erbium laser using NOLM-NALM

In this paper, we demonstrate a new architecture of a self-seeded multiwavelength Brillouin-erbium laser by using a nonlinear optical-loop mirror and a nonlinear amplifying-loop mirror (NOLM-NALM). A stable operation of 61 Brillouin-Stokes lines with a 0.08-nm spacing was obtained and the laser exhibited satisfied the flatness of the output spectrum with a low-threshold pump power. It is shown that the four-wave mixing (FWM) contributes to the generation of high-order Brillouin-Stokes and anti-Stokes and, consequently, results in the increase of the Stokes number and the reduction of its peak power.     

Room temperature multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber ring laser using a highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber

A multiwavelength laser source is demonstrated with a high power erbium-doped fiber amplifier as the gain medium. A highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is inserted in the ring cavity to provide nonlinear gain by four-wave mixing. A Sagnac loop is incorporated in the ring cavity serving as a comb-like multichannel filter. The comparison between fiber ring laser without PCF and with PCF shows that the highly nonlinear PCF can generate a larger number of excited wavelengths and help stabilize the output power.     

Tunable and switchable multi-wavelength Erbium-doped photonic crystal fiber ring laser incorporating a length of highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber

A tunable and switchable multi-wavelength Erbium-doped photonic crystal fiber ring laser incorporating a length of single-mode highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber is proposed and demonstrated experimentally. Stable dual-wavelength and triple-wavelength operations at room temperature are achieved by employing the highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber to induce four-wave mixing effect and a polarization controller to vary the polarization states of propagation lights in the laser cavity. The laser cavity is free from any wavelength selection components. The laser obtains maximal 30 dB signal-to-noise ratio and the peak power fluctuations of lasing lines are less than 1.39 dB.     

Tunable single- and dual-wavelength erbium-doped fiber laser based on Sagnac filter with a high-birefringence photonic crystal fiber

In this paper, we observed and experimentally investigated a high-performance single- and dual-wavelength erbium-doped fiber ring laser based on a Sagnac filter which contains a section of high-birefringence photonic crystal fiber (HB-PCF) and a polarization controller. Incorporation of the high-birefringence photonic crystal fiber can suppress multimode oscillation, improve power stability and increase the optical signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Wavelength tunable was achieved by using a polarization controller in the Sagnac filter. Highly stable single-, dual-wavelength oscillations are tunable within a wavelength range from 1550 to 1562 nm and SNR as high as 57 dB with narrow line width about 0.011 nm, is experimentally demonstrated.     

Q-switched thulium-doped photonic crystal fiber laser

We report a novel, Tm-doped photonic crystal fiber (PCF) actively Q-switched oscillator that provides ~8.9 kW peak power with 435 μJ, 49 ns pulses at 10 kHz repetition rate at 2 μm wavelength. This fiber has a mode-field area >1000 μm2, the largest of any flexible PCF providing diffraction-limited beam quality to the best of our knowledge. As an application, the oscillator is used as pump to generate >350 nm broadening in ~50 m of SMF-28 fiber.     

High-energy femtosecond photonic crystal fiber laser

We report the generation of high-energy high-peak power pulses in an all-normal dispersion fiber laser featuring large-mode-area photonic crystal fibers. The self-starting chirped-pulse fiber oscillator delivers 11 W of average power at 15.5 MHz repetition rate, resulting in 710 nJ of pulse energy. The output pulses are dechirped outside the cavity from 7 ps to nearly transform-limited duration of 300 fs, leading to pulse peak powers as high as 1.9 MW. Numerical simulations reveal that pulse shaping is dominated by the amplitude modulation and spectral filtering provided by a resonant semiconductor saturable absorber.     

Optical carrier-suppression technique with a Brillouin-erbium fiber laser

We demonstrate a new concept in optical carrier control that uses a simple arrangement based on a hybrid Brillouin-erbium fiber laser. The system offers precise tunable control of the optical carrier amplitude independently of the characteristics of the transmitter or the optical modulation format. As much as 55 dB of carrier attenuation is demonstrated, which to our knowledge is the highest reported attenuation for a carrier-suppression system.     

Tunable dual-wavelength fiber laser based on an opto-VLSI processor and four-wave mixing in a photonic crystal fiber

A stable wavelength and wavelength spacing tunable dual-wavelength fiber laser based on an Opto-very-large-scale-integration (Opto-VLSI) processor and four-wave mixing (FWM) in a high-nonlinear photonic crystal fiber is experimentally demonstrated. The results show that the line width of the tunable dual-wavelength fiber laser is 0.02 nm, and the wavelength spacing can be tuned from 0.8 nm to 4 nm with a 0.15 nm step. Under the influence of the FWM, the uniformity is below 0.6 dB and the measured side mode suppression ratio (SMSR) is above 45 dB.     

High-power double-clad large-mode-area photonic crystal fiber laser

A high power double-clad ytterbium-doped large-mode-area photonic crystal fiber (LMA PCF) laser was demonstrated using a unique Fabry-Perot (F-P) configuration. The pump source is a fiber coupled diode array operating at 976 nm. A continuous wave (CW) output power of 50 W at ～ 1.04 μm with a slope efficiency of 76.3% is obtained. Single transverse mode operation is achieved without any thermal-optical problems. This laser has the potential for scaling to much higher output power.     

多芯光子晶体光纤锁模激光器

实验研究了基于掺Yb多芯大模场面积光子晶体光纤的全正色散锁模激光器.增益光纤的18个纤芯呈六角阵列排布,等效的模场直径约为52 μm.激光器基于σ腔结构,腔内没有色散补偿元件,通过半导体可饱和吸收镜实现锁模的自启动.实验获得了平均功率为3.3 W,脉冲宽度为4.92 ps,重复频率为44.68 MHz的锁模脉冲输出,对应的单脉冲能量为74 nJ,脉冲经腔外光栅对压缩为780 fs. 关键词： 光子晶体光纤 多芯 光纤激光器 全正色散     

Multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber laser using twin-core photonic crystal fiber

Laser Physics - We propose a novel multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber laser incorporating a twin-core photonic crystal fiber (TC-PCF) based Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). TC-PCF based...     

Tunable photonic crystal fiber coupler based on a side-polishing technique

A tunable photonic crystal fiber (PCF) coupler, which couples part of the optical power in one PCF with that in another PCF, has been made by side polishing. We fabricated the PCF coupler by mating two side-polished PCFs. We achieved evanescent field coupling between the core modes of the two PCFs by using side polishing to bring the cores close to each other. By adjusting the mating angle between the two side-polished PCFs we obtained as much as 90% tunability in the coupling ratio. The spectrum of the coupling ratio was almost flat, with small ripples, over a 400-nm wavelength range.     

Multiwavelength Brillouin-erbium fiber laser incorporating a fiber Bragg grating filter

In this paper, we demonstrate a multiwavelength Brillouin erbium fiber laser in a Fabry-Perot cavity. The design utilized a bidirectional oscillation provided by a fiber Bragg grating filter and a fiber loop mirror at each end of the laser cavity. A stable operation of 25 Brillouin-Stokes lines was obtained at around a 1559-nm band.     

Actively mode-locked fiber ring laser based on photonic crystal fiber

A wavelength tunable, high repetition rate mode-locked fiber ring laser was demonstrated. In the experiment, photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is used as an intracavity compression medium. The high nonlinearity and anomalous dispersion of PCF can cause intracavity compression and result in significant reduction in the pulse width. The pulses duration at the repetition rate of 9.99 GHz was less than 10 ps over the range of 1532-1565 nm.