Tunable and switchable triple-wavelength ytterbium-doped fiber ring laser based on Sagnac interferometer with a polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fiber

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A tunable and switchable triple-wavelength ytterbium-doped fiber laser (YDFL) based on a polarization-maintaining photonic crystal fiber (PMPCF) Sagnac interferometer is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Owing to the large inhomogeneity of gain profile and simple two-level system of ytterbium-doped fiber, a tunable triple-wavelength lasing output is achieved with a tuning range of 1.6 nm. At room temperature, the maximum wavelength shift and peak power fluctuation are less than 0.018 nm and 0.64 dB, respectively. Moreover, the output lasing can be switched to single-wavelength lasing or dual-wavelength lasing through adjusting polarization controller. A tunable single-wavelength lasing with the side-mode suppression ratio above 50 dB is achieved from the wavelength of 1034.276 nm to 1038.314 nm. Two kinds of tunable dual-wavelength lasing with the tuning range of 3.2 nm are obtained in our experiment. In addition, the temperature stability is discussed by constructing the YDFL with PMPCF and conventional polarization-maintaining fiber (PMF), respectively. Experimental results demonstrate that the measured temperature sensitivity for PMPCF-based YDFL is 0.014 nm/℃, which is five times lower than that for PMF-based YDFL.