Dissipative Soliton Resonances in a Mode-Locked Holmium-Doped Fiber Laser

Abstract

We demonstrate what is believed to be the first dissipative-soliton-resonance mode-locking of a holmium-doped fiber (HDF) laser. A telecommunication band fiber source was used to pump a piece of thulium-doped fiber, resulting in 1.9-μm band lasing, which was subsequently used to intra-cavity-pump another piece of HDF, resulting in lasing beyond 2 μm. A nonlinear optical-loop mirror incorporating two pieces of high nonlinear fiber (HNLF) was employed as an artificial saturable absorber, and, meanwhile, to enhance the cavity nonlinearity. By varying the pump power from ~2.1 to ~4 W, the produced pulse could be tuned from ~4.85 to ~20.8 ns in duration while maintaining a nearly constant peak power, i.e., peak power clamping (PPC) effect. By further incorporating different lengths of HNLF, it was found that the longer the HNLF, the larger the pulse duration and the lower the pulse peak power, due to the expected stronger PPC effect. Meanwhile, spectral blue-shifting effect has occurred due to the increased fiber attenuation loss. Based on our preliminary experiments using the HDF laser as a test bed, a higher pulse energy at a longer wavelength could be expected with further enhanced pumping and gain-tailoring designs.