Thermo-optically tunable fiber ring laser without any mechanical moving parts

A thermo-optically tunable fiber ring laser has been constructed. The laser is based on a polymer-spaced Fabry-Perot F-P etalon with a cavity length of 470-m and an ultra-low polarization-dependent loss PDL of 0.1 dB. A wavelength tuning range of 1.4 nm and a high wave- length stability of 0.02 nm have been demonstrated with- out involving any moving mechanical parts. Such a nonme- chanical tunable fiber laser structure leads to a reduced device size and allows easy device packaging due to the ultra-low PDL of the wavelength tuning element. © 2006 Soci- ety of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. DOI: 10.1117/1.2219737 Subject terms: tunable fiber laser; wavelength division multiplexing; thermo-optic; polymer-spaced Fabry-Perot etalon; polarization in- sensitive wavelength tuning; nonmechanical moving wavelength tuning.