1700\u2009nm and 1800\u2009nm band tunable thulium doped mode-locked fiber lasers

Siamak Dawazdah Emami,Hui Jing Lee,Hairul Azhar Abdul Rashid,Mahdi Mozdoor Dashtabi,Atoosa Sadat Arabanian

doi:10.1038/s41598-017-13200-x

Siamak Dawazdah Emami, Hui Jing Lee + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-13200-x

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Abstract

This paper presents short wavelength operation of tunable thulium-doped mode-locked lasers with sweep ranges of 1702 to 1764 nm and 1788 to 1831 nm. This operation is realized by a combination of the partial amplified spontaneous emission suppression method, the bidirectional pumping mechanism and the nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) technique. Lasing at emission bands lower than the 1800 nm wavelength in thulium-doped fiber lasers is achieved using mode confinement loss in a specially designed photonic crystal fiber (PCF). The enlargement of the first outer ring air holes around the core region of the PCF attenuates emissions above the cut-off wavelength and dominates the active region. This amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) suppression using our presented PCF is applied to a mode-locked laser cavity and is demonstrated to be a simple and compact solution to widely tunable all-fiber lasers.

Highlights

Interest in fiber lasers emitting in the wavelength range of 1700 to 2100 nm has been escalating in recent fiber laser related research
This paper reports an all-fiber tunable thulium-doped mode-locked laser with the two wide tunable ranges of 1702 to 1764 nm and 1788 to 1831 nm
Two tunable ranges of a thulium doped mode-locked all-fiber laser are achieved

Summary

Introduction

Interest in fiber lasers emitting in the wavelength range of 1700 to 2100 nm has been escalating in recent fiber laser related research. Recent studies focused on achieving optimum signal transmission in the range of 1700 to 1900 nm For such a case, hollow-core photonics band-gap fibers (HC-PBGFs) are proposed[7,8]. TDFs have recently been fabricated, which generate gain in a broad wavelength range Such fibers successfully enhanced the operation of optical amplifiers, continuous-wave fiber lasers and super luminescent sources in the 1700–2100 nm range that peaks at approximately 1900 nm[6,16]. This paper reports an all-fiber tunable thulium-doped mode-locked laser with the two wide tunable ranges of 1702 to 1764 nm and 1788 to 1831 nm This is achieved with a combination of partial ASE suppression and the nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) technique. Two PCFs, namely, PCF (1) and PCF (2), are designed and applied to the mode-locked fiber laser setup to achieve desirable wavelength lasing

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