Abstract
We report on a mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser delivering highly-chirped pulses with several tens of nanojoules of energy around 1560 nm and its exploitation to efficiently pump a fiber optical parametric oscillator (FOPO), thus enabling picosecond pulse generation around 1700 nm. The laser cavity features a high normal dispersion and mode-locking is sustained using tailored spectral filtering combined with nonlinear polarization evolution and a semiconductor saturable absorber. Numerical simulations show that the laser dynamics is governed by a strong mode-locking mechanism compensating for the large spectral and temporal pulse evolution along the cavity. In the frame of high energy picosecond pulse generation around 1700 nm, we then demonstrate that using highly-chirped pulses as pump pulses allows for the efficient tuning of the FOPO idler wavelength between 1620 and 1870 nm. In addition, satisfying noise characteristics have been achieved both for the Er-laser and the FOPO, with respective relative intensity noises (RIN) of −154 and −140 dBc/Hz, thus paving the way for the use of such sources in ultrafast instrumentation.
Highlights
The development of high-energy ultrafast fiber lasers has attracted much interest owing to their inherent advantages including compactness, high stability, high-power capability, and turnkey operation
There is an identified need for fiber optical parametric oscillator (FOPO) systems emitting around 1.7 μm and for efficient and versatile fiberized pump sources featuring at the same time relatively high energies, good noise characteristics, and the possibility to directly generate highly-chirped pulses as, in this case, dispersive tuning within the FOPO cavity can offer a supplementary degree of freedom for the FOPO’s tunability
We report and review the design and realization of a large normal dispersion mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser emitting dissipative solitons at 1560 nm and use numerical simulations to highlight the specific self-similar dynamics occurring within the cavity
Summary
The development of high-energy ultrafast fiber lasers has attracted much interest owing to their inherent advantages including compactness, high stability, high-power capability, and turnkey operation. Erbium-doped fiber lasers are a widespread technology in many applications such as free-space telecommunications, range finding, remote sensing, and medical procedures. In this frame, efficient fiber laser systems based on frequency conversion processes, e.g., four-wave mixing (FWM), have been developed, enabling wavelength tunability over several hundreds of nanometers [8]. The best performances in terms of noise are obtained with synchronously pumped fiber optical parametric oscillators (FOPOs). Their combination with spectral or dispersion-based filters allowed broad tunability and high energies in the 0.7–1.3 μm wavelength range [5,6,9]. There is an identified need for FOPO systems emitting around 1.7 μm and for efficient and versatile fiberized pump sources featuring at the same time relatively high energies, good noise characteristics, and the possibility to directly generate highly-chirped pulses as, in this case, dispersive tuning within the FOPO cavity can offer a supplementary degree of freedom for the FOPO’s tunability
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