Maxwell-Bloch modelocking instabilities in erbium-doped fiber lasers

Abstract Instabilities due to mode-locking mechanism in CW erbium-doped fiber lasers are experimentally investigated. These effects appear to be basically different from other pulsed regimes related to nonlinear Kerr effect and/or saturable absorption phenomena. Mathematical modelling based on the semiclassical laser equations (Maxwell-Bloch) succeeds in showing a substantial agreement with experimental results and predicts the existence of periodic regimes.