A tunable nanosecond pulse mode-locking fiber laser

Liu Yuxing; Jiang Panqiu; Wang Pinghe

doi:10.12086/oee.2021.210195

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Liu Y X, Jiang P Q, Wang P H. A tunable nanosecond pulse mode-locking fiber laser[J]. Opto-Electron Eng, 2021, 48(9): 210195. doi: 10.12086/oee.2021.210195

Citation:

Liu Y X, Jiang P Q, Wang P H. A tunable nanosecond pulse mode-locking fiber laser[J]. Opto-Electron Eng, 2021, 48(9): 210195. doi: 10.12086/oee.2021.210195

A tunable nanosecond pulse mode-locking fiber laser

State Key Laboratory of Electronic Thin Films and Integrated Devices, School of Optoelectronic Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, Sichuan 611731, China

Fund Project: the National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFF0102003, 2016YFF0102000)

More Information

^*Corresponding author: Wang Pinghe, E-mail: wphsci@uestc.edu.cn

Received Date 07 June 2021

Revised Date 13 July 2021

Published Date 15 September 2021

Abstract

Abstract

A tunable nanosecond pulse fiber laser is demonstrated in the paper. The laser adopts the passive mode locking mechanism of the nonlinear amplifying loop mirror and a manually adjustable filter and fiber grating are added to achieve single-wavelength spectral output. The passive mode locked erbium-doped fiber laser with 430 m cavity length generates the nanosecond rectangle pulse at 465 kHz repetition rate. The tunable passive mode locked fiber laser incorporates a broad bandwidth mode locking device and a tunable filter in the cavity. The broad bandwidth mode locker is the key device for the tunable pulse output, which is based on a reflective nonlinear amplifying loop mirror. The result shows that the pulse duration and the single-pulse energy are 10.58 ns and 70.28 nJ respectively when the laser works at 1560 nm and has 400 mW pump power. The tunable range is from 1523.4 nm to 1575 nm.
- fiber laser /
- tunable /
- mode-locking /
- nanosecond pulse

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References

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Overview

Overview

Overview: The tunable passive mode locked fiber laser has attracted a lot of interest because of its wide field applications, such as biomedical research and fiber optical sensing. The tunable passive mode locked fiber laser incorporate the passive mode locking technique and wavelength-selective devices in the cavity. Recently, the passive mode locked fiber lasers at 1.5 μm with a tuning range over 70 nm are demonstrated, but the pulse energy is low. The long cavity mode locked fiber laser can produce the pulse train with high pulse energy. A mode locked fiber laser with 1536 m cavity length and 10 μJ pulse energy was reported.

In this paper, we present a tunable long-cavity passive mode-locked fiber laser based on reflective nonlinear amplifying loop mirror (NALM). The reflective NALM serves as the mode locker, which is made up of a 50: 50 optical coupler (the measured ratio is 48.6: 51.4), an erbium-doped fiber amplifier, 404 m single mode fiber and two polarization controllers. The net dispersion in the cavity is -8.87 ps². A manual tunable bandpass filter (TBF) is inserted into the cavity. The tunable range of the TBF is from 1510 nm to1580 nm.

At first, the laser at 1560 nm is investigated in detail. The laser operates in DSR region and generates rectangular pulses with 465 kHz repetition rate. Figure shows the pulse evolution at different pump powers. When the pump power increases from 100 mW to 400 mW at 50 mW interval, the pulse durations are 3.88 ns, 4.64 ns, 6.36 ns, 7.72 ns, 8.76 ns, 9.34 ns and 10.58 ns, respectively. The single-pulse energy is 70.28 nJ when the pump power is 400 mW. The tuning characteristics of the passive mode locked fiber laser is investigated by adjusting TBF's transmission wavelength. When the pump power is 400 mW, the laser can keep stable mode-locking status at the range from 1523.4 nm to 1575 nm. The threshold pump power has a little fluctuation around 80 mW. During the whole tuning range, the SNR of the laser is ~50 dB, which proves that the laser keeps stable mode-locking status during the tuning course. The pulse duration, the output power and single pulse energy have a little fluctuation because that the gain of the EDF changes with the wavelength. The tunable nanosecond pulse fiber laser has a lot of potential applications in many fields.