Linearly polarised three-colour lasing emission from an evanescent wave pumped and gain coupled fibre laser

Abstract

A novel Whispering–Gallery–Mode (WGM) fibre laser, emitting linearly polarised three-colour light, is demonstrated by pumping and gain coupling with evanescent waves. The pump light is longitudinally coupled into a bare optical fibre immersed in a dye solution of lower refractive index. The dye molecules around the bare fibre are excited by the evanescent waves of pump light when they propagate along the fibre in a total internal reflection. When the pump beam within the fibre is a meridian beam, the WGM lasing emission from the fibre laser is a linearly polarised transverse electric wave, while it is a mixed wave of the linearly polarised transverse electric and magnetic waves if the pump beam is a skew beam within the fibre. Because the excited molecules are located within the evanescent field of WGM, a good spatial overlap between the dye gain and the evanescent field leads to a high pumping efficiency and a longer gain distance along the fibre. Once the bare fibre is inserted into three glass capillaries filled with Rhodamine 6G, 610 and 640 dye solutions, respectively, WGM laser oscillations at the wavelengths of 567–575, 605–614 and 656–666 nm occur simultaneously, and a linearly polarised three-colour lasing emission is achieved in a single optical fibre.