Tunable and wavelength interval precisely controlled erbium-doped fiber laser by employing the fused taper technology

Abstract

A tunable multi-wavelength erbium-doped fiber laser with precise wavelength interval control is reported theoretically and experimentally in this paper. It is made up of a Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) filter and a Sagnac filter and supplemented by the four-wave-mixing effect. Compared with other filters, the proposed MZI filter based on the fused taper technology can change the wavelength interval more flexibly. The experiment result shows that wavelength tuning can be achieved, and the tuning range can reach ∼15 nm. Moreover, the variation in the number of wavelengths is also realized. The maximum side-mode suppression ratio can reach 39 dB.