Wavelength-Tunable Er $^{3+}$-Doped fs Mode-Locked Fiber Laser Using Short-Pass Edge Filters

We demonstrate a wavelength-tunable Er3+-doped femtosecond mode-locked soliton fiber laser by incorporating a short-pass edge filter into a ring cavity. When the filter is thermo-optically tuned toward shorter wavelengths to strongly attenuate the wavelengths longer than the cutoff, the constituting wavelengths of the mode-locked fiber laser move to shorter wavelengths and the laser center wavelength can be tuned over 1539.7 ~ 1560 nm. The cavity dispersion is preset in the deep soliton region to keep small fluctuations of laser pulsewidth when the laser wavelength is tuned.

[1]  J. Limpert,et al.  Ultrafast fiber amplifier systems: Status, perspectives and applications , 2008, 2008 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics and 2008 Conference on Quantum Electronics and Laser Science.

[2]  N. Chen,et al.  Towards the short-wavelength limit lasing at 1450 nm over 4I13/2 ? 4I15/2 transition in silica-based erbium-doped fiber. , 2007, Optics express.

[3]  R. Iyer,et al.  Telecom-Band Directional Coupler Written With Femtosecond Fiber Laser , 2006, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[4]  K. Hsu,et al.  Widely and fast wavelength-tunable mode-locked fiber laser at 1.55μm region using intracavity dispersion , 2006, 2006 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics and 2006 Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference.

[5]  M. Tang,et al.  Dual-wavelength 10-GHz actively mode-locked erbium fiber laser incorporating highly nonlinear fibers , 2005, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[6]  J. Villatoro,et al.  In-line tunable band-edge filter based on a single-mode tapered fiber coated with a dispersive material , 2005, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[7]  J. Fujimoto,et al.  Amplified, frequency swept lasers for frequency domain reflectometry and OCT imaging: design and scaling principles. , 2005, Optics express.

[8]  N. Chen,et al.  Wideband tunable fiber short-pass filter based on side-polished fiber with dispersive polymer overlay. , 2004, Optics letters.

[9]  N. Nishizawa,et al.  Compact system of wavelength-tunable femtosecond soliton pulse generation using optical fibers , 1999, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[10]  Shenping Li,et al.  A novel configuration for multiwavelength actively mode-locked fiber lasers using cascaded fiber Bragg gratings , 1999 .

[11]  Hermann A. Haus,et al.  Stretched-Pulse Additive Pulse Mode-Locking in Fiber , 1994 .

[12]  J. Fujimoto,et al.  Structures for additive pulse mode locking , 1991 .