An L-band widely tunable erbium-doped fiber laser with all-fiber structure

Abstract

We report on a widely tunable L-band erbium-doped fiber ring laser with the exploitation of an all-fiber Lyot fiber. The all-fiber Lyot filter is constructed from a polarizer, a short section of polarization-maintaining fiber and polarization controllers. Theoretical analysis shows that the laser oscillating wavelength can be tuned by changing the polarization rotation angle. By adjusting the polarization controllers, the laser can be tuned continuously over the full L band (1559.84–1603.19 nm) with a tunability of 43 nm, a side-mode suppression ratio over 44 dB, and power uniformity better than 1.2 dB. The simple and efficient tuning mechanism allows the building of inexpensive widely tunable fiber lasers with all-fiber structure.