Broadly Tunable Erbium-Doped Fiber Ring Laser Based on Tapered Polarization Maintaining Fiber

Abstract

A broadly tunable erbium-doped fiber ring laser is proposed and demonstrated based on the tapered polarization maintaining fiber (PMF) Sagnac interferometer, in which the Sagnac and intermodal interferences are superimposed to generate one localized peak over a wide wavelength range in its transmission spectrum. By heating the tapered PMF, the localized peak may be discretely tuned with the temperature at the step, depending on the intermodal interference. Tunability may become continuous when additional stress is exerted longitudinally on the tapered PMF. The tapered PMF Sagnac interferometer is inserted into the laser cavity to achieve broadly and continuously tunable output. Specifically, by optimizing the PMF length and its tapering section to obtain proper channel intervals of the Sagnac and intermodal interference, the lasing wavelength is continuously tuned over 60 nm covering from 1565.1 nm to 1625.2 nm with sidemode suppression ratio higher than 50 dB and power uniformity better than 1 dB. The tuning responses to temperature and axial stress are both linear with sensitivity of −1.1 nm/°C and −29.4 pm/μϵ. Most importantly, the temperature and axial stress affect the Sagnac and intermodal interferences, respectively, which makes it convenient to set the lasing wavelength beforehand during operation.