Single-frequency, single-polarization holmium-doped ZBLAN fiber laser

Abstract

We present the performance of a single frequency, single-polarization holmium (Ho³⁺)-doped ZBLAN (ZrF₄-BaF₂-LaF₃- AlF₃-NaF) fiber laser at 1200 nm. This distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) fiber laser was developed by splicing a 22 mm long highly Ho³⁺-doped ZBLAN fiber to a pair of silica fiber Bragg gratings (FBG). The successful fusion splicing of silica fiber to ZBLAN fiber, with their very different melting temperatures, was accomplished by using NP Photonics proprietary splicing technique. The 3 mol% Ho³⁺-doped ZBLAN fiber had a core diameter of 6.5 μm and a cladding diameter of 125 μm. The threshold of this laser was seen to be about 260 mW, and when the pump power was 520 mW, the output power was about 10 mW. The efficiency of the 1200 nm single-frequency fiber laser, i.e. the ratio of the output power to the launched pump power, was about 3.8%. The linewidth of the 1200 nm single-frequency fiber laser was estimated to be about 100 kHz by comparing the measured frequency noise of the 1200 nm single-frequency fiber laser with that of 1 μm NP Photonics single-frequency fiber lasers whose linewidths have been measured to be in the 1- 10 kHz range. The relative intensity noise of this DBR all-fiber laser was measured to be < 110 dB/Hz at the relaxation oscillation peak and the polarization extinction ratio was measured to be > 19 dB. Due to its low phonon energy and long radiative lifetimes, rare-earth-doped ZBLAN allows various transitions that are typically terminated in silica glass, resulting in ultraviolet, visible, and infrared rare-earth doped ZBLAN lasers. Therefore, our results highlight the exciting prospect that the accessible wavelength range of single-frequency DBR fiber lasers can be expanded significantly by using rare-earth-doped ZBLAN fibers.