Optomechanical engineering of quasi-continuous-wave background in mode-locked fiber laser

Abstract

Noise-like quasi-continuous-wave background (qCWB) in a mode-locked fiber laser mediates various multi-pulse dynamics via long-range inter-pulse interactions. This raises a possibility to control multi-pulse phenomena through manipulation of the qCWB, while it has been rarely studied yet. Here, we investigate the qCWB engineering by imposing optomechanically induced impulsive intensity modulations on the qCWB. The mode-locked pulses excite electrostrictively several transverse acoustic resonance modes inside the fiber cavity, which eventually leads to the formation of sharp qCWB modulations regularly spaced in the time domain. In particular, we experimentally demonstrate that the characteristics of the optomechanical qCWB modulations can be adjusted by controlling the in-fiber optomechanical interactions via changing the structure of the fiber core, cladding, and coating. Our observations are supported by directly measured forward stimulated Brillouin scattering spectra of the intracavity fibers.