Q-switched fiber laser based on an acousto-optic modulator with injection seeding technique.

Abstract

The operation mechanism and the pulse property of an actively Q-switched erbium-doped fiber laser based on an acousto-optic modulator (AOM) switch with the injection seeding technique are investigated. Our results show that the Q-switched pulses can be locked to oscillate near a fixed frequency higher than that of the seed laser, though the frequency-shift effect of the AOM impedes stable cavity mode oscillations. The operation mechanism of such Q-switch fiber lasers can be explained by the mutual locking-in among the shifted frequency components originated from the injected coherence seed with the help of the gain dynamics of the Q-switch cavity. Moreover, narrow-linewidth Q-switched pulses with different repetition rates can be obtained with different cavity lengths for incredibly stable output pulses without any use of cavity-stabilized techniques.