Environmentally stable ytterbium figure-of-eight fiber laser producing 177-fs pulses

Pulses of 177 fs and 1035 nm, with average power of 1.2 mW, have been generated directly from a passively mode-locked Yb-doped figure-of-eight fiber laser, with a nonlinear optical loop mirror for mode-locking and pairs of diffraction gratings for intracavity dispersion compensation. To our knowledge, these are the shortest pulses ever to come from a passively mode-locked Yb-doped figure-of-eight fiber laser. This represents a 5-fold reduction in pulse duration compared with that of previously reported passively mode-locked Yb-doped figure-of-eight fiber lasers. Stable pulse trains are produced at the fundamental repetition rate of the resonator, 24.0 MHz. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Generation of 207-femtosecond pulses from a ytterbium figure-of-eight fibre laser

We report the generation of 207-fs pulses with 1.2mW average power at 1036 nm directly from a passively mode-locked Yb-doped fibre laser with a nonlinear optical loop mirror for mode-locking and pairs of diffraction gratings for intracavity dispersion compensation. These results imply a 4-fold reduction in pulse duration over previously reported figure-of-eight cavity passively mode-locked Yb-doped fibre lasers. Stable pulse trains are produced at the fundamental repetition rate of the resonator, 24.0MHz. On the other hand, this laser offers a cleaner spectrum and greater stability and is completely self-starting.

40-GHz wavelength tunable mode-locked SOA-based fiber laser with 40-nm tuning range

A 40-GHz wavelength tunable mode-locked fiber ring laser based oil cross-gain modulation in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is presented. Pulse trains with a pulse width of 10.5 ps at 40-GHz repetition frequency are obtained. The laser operates with almost 40-nm tuning range. The relationship between the key laser parameters and the output pulse characteristics is analyzed experimentally.

Comparative studies of semiconductor saturable absorber mirror mode-locking dynamics in pulsed diode-end-pumped picosecond Nd:GdVO4 and Nd:YAG lasers

Ultrashort pulses were generated in passively mode-locked Nd:YAG and Nd:GdVO4 lasers pumped by a pulsed laser diode with 10-Hz repetition rate. Stable mode-locked pulse trains were produced with the pulse width of 10 ps. The evolution of the mode-locked pulse was observed in the experiment and was discussed in detail. Comparing the pulse evolutions of Nd:YAG and Nd:GdVO4 lasers, we found that the buildup time of the steady-state mode-locking with semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors (SESAMs) was relevant to the upper-state lifetime and the emission cross-section of the gain medium.

Generation of optimized wavelength-tunable optical pulse from an uncooled gain-switched Fabry-Perot semiconductor laser using optical amplifier as external light injection

We present a novel system design that can generate the optimized wavelength-tunable optical pulse streams from an uncooled gain-switched Fabry-Perot semiconductor laser using an optical amplifier as external light source. The timing jitter of gain-switched laser has been reduced from about 3 ps to 600 fs and the pulse width has been optimized by using our system. The stability of the system was also experimentally investigated. Our results show that an uncooled gain-switched FP laser system can feasibly produce the stable optical pulse trains with pulse width of 18 ps at the repetition frequency of 5 GHz during 7 h continuous working. We respectively proved the system feasibility under 1 GHz, 2.5 GHz and 5 GHz operation. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.