Improvement of the fiber raman soliton laser for femtosecond optical pulse generation

Femtosecond optical pulses generated from a synchronously pumped fiber Raman soliton laser (FRASL) have been shown to have large excess noise and high background light (i.e., the pedestal) levels. In this paper, to improve the FRASL, the operation characteristics of the FRASL are investigated both theoretically and experimentally. It is shown that real femtosecond soliton oscillation in the FRASL can be obtained only when the soliton self-frequency shift (SSFS) effect in the fibers is suppressed and proper choices of both the Stokes oscillation wavelength and the pump power level are required for the SSFS suppression in the FRASL. By using a tunable all-fiber Raman ring laser, optical pulses as short as 400 fs with a low white AM noise level of -120 dBc / Hz have been generated from the compact FRASL with SSFS suppression. Based on the theoretical analyses, we propose to use an intracavity saturable absorber to prevent the generation of high-level Stokes background light in the FRASL, and the feasibility of this method is shown by numerical simulations.