Femtosecond mode-locked Erbium-doped fiber ring laser with intra-cavity loss controlled full L-band wavelength tunability.

By using a tunable-ratio optical coupler (TROC) to adjust the wavelength dependent intra-cavity loss, a L-band mode-locked erbium-doped fiber-ring laser (ML-EDFL) is demonstrated for generating wavelength-tunable femtosecond pulses. The change of output coupling ratio introduces different intra-cavity loss and shifts the peak of mode-locked gain profile to provide continuous detuning on wavelength of the ML-EDFL. A maximum tuning range of about 40 nm (from 1565.1 to 1605.3 nm) by decreasing the output coupling ratio from 95% to 5% is obtained, corresponding to a wavelength tuning slope of 2.25 nm/dB. The ML-EDFL exhibits a super-mode suppressing ratio as high as 47 dB and a pulsewidth of <5 ps at repetition frequency of 1 GHz. Nearly transform-limited pulsewidth of 580 fs is generated by linear dispersion compressing the EDFL pulses with a 32.5m-long single-mode fiber under an output coupling ratio of 10%.

[1]  Harmonically mode-locked fiber laser with optically selectable wavelength , 2002, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[2]  Hai-Han Lu,et al.  L-band erbium-doped fiber laser with coupling-ratio controlled wavelength tunability. , 2006, Optics express.

[3]  M. Nissov,et al.  765 Gb/s over 2,000 km transmission using C- and L-band erbium doped fiber amplifiers , 1999, OFC/IOOC . Technical Digest. Optical Fiber Communication Conference, 1999, and the International Conference on Integrated Optics and Optical Fiber Communication.

[4]  Dong Xiao-yi,et al.  Generation of wavelength-switched optical pulse from a fiber ring laser with an F-P semiconductor modulator and a HiBi fiber loop mirror , 2002 .

[5]  K.T. Chan,et al.  Generation and wavelength switching of picosecond pulses by optically modulating a semiconductor optical amplifier in a fiber laser with optical delay line , 2003, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[6]  Julius Goldhar,et al.  Smoothly wavelength-tunable picosecond pulse generation using a harmonically mode-locked fiber ring laser , 2003 .

[7]  Zhaoyang Hu,et al.  A stable smoothly wavelength-tunable picosecond pulse generator , 2002, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[8]  Shenping Li,et al.  Electrical wavelength-tunable actively mode-locked fiber ring laser with a linearly chirped fiber Bragg grating , 1998, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[9]  Yang Shiquan,et al.  Generation of wavelength-switched optical pulse from a fiber ring laser with an F-P semiconductor modulator and a HiBi fiber loop mirror , 2002, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[10]  I. Bennion,et al.  Wavelength-switched optical pulse generation in a fiber ring laser with a Fabry-Perot semiconductor modulator and a sampled fiber Bragg grating , 2001, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.