Experimental Investigation of Wavelength-Tunable All-Normal-Dispersion Yb-Doped Mode-Locked Fiber Lasers: Compression and Amplification

Abstract

Wavelength-tunable ultrashort pulse source with high energy is highly desired for a lot of applications. The wavelength-tunable all-normal-dispersion (ANDi) mode-locked fiber laser, which can be compressed easily and amplified by an all-fiber structure, is a promising seed of such a source with compact structures. The pulse compression and amplification at different center wavelengths (from 1026 to 1058 nm) of the tunable ANDi Ybdoped mode-locked fiber lasers that we previously proposed are experimentally investigated in this work. It is found that, for different wavelengths, the duration and chirp of the direct output pulse from the oscillator vary considerably, however, the duration of compressed pulse fluctuates less. For the amplification process, due to the unflat gain spectrum of Yb-doped fiber, the gain at a short wavelength is larger than that at a long wavelength. Consequently, the trends of spectrum distortions induced by the amplification process are different for different wavelengths. These results and analyses will be helpful for the design of a high-energy and wavelength-tunable ultrashort pulse source based on an ANDi seed.