Dual-band wavelength tunable nonlinear polarization rotation mode-locked Erbium-doped fiber lasers induced by birefringence variation and gain curvature alteration.

Abstract

With the combining effects of the fiber birefringence induced round-trip phase variation and the gain profile reshaping induced spectral filtering in the Erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) cavity, the mechanism corresponding to the central wavelength tunability of the EDFL passively mode-locked by nonlinear polarization rotation is explored. Bending the intracavity fiber induces the refractive index difference between orthogonal axes, which enables the dual-band central wavelength shift of 2.9 nm at 1570 nm region and up to 10.2 nm at 1600 nm region. The difference between the wavelength shifts at two bands is attributed to the gain dispersion decided by the gain spectral curvature of the EDFA, and the spacing between two switchable bands is provided by the birefringence induced variation on phase delay which causes transmittance variation. In addition, the central wavelength shift can also be controlled by varying the pumping geometry. At 1570 nm regime, an offset of up to 5.9 nm between the central wavelengths obtained under solely forward or backward pumping condition is observed, whereas the bidirectional pumping scheme effectively compensates the gain spectral reshaping effects to minimize the central wavelength shift. In contrast, the wavelength offset shrinks to only 1.1 nm when mode-locking at 1600 nm under single-sided pumping, as the gain profile strongly depends on the spatial distribution of the excited erbium ions under different pumping schemes. Except the birefringence variation and the gain spectral filtering phenomena, the gain-saturation mechanism induced refractive index change and its influence to the dual-band central wavelength tunability are also observed and analyzed.