Tunable multiwavelength fiber lasers and their applications

Abstract

We summarize our recent work on the development of multi-wavelength fiber lasers. The multi-wavelength fiber laser is constructed by all-fiber components and capable of continuous tuning in absolute wavelength and discrete tuning in wavelength spacing. One of the key components of the multi-wavelength fiber laser is a novel fiber comb filter. First, we will discuss the novel fiber comb filters based on fiber Lyot and Sagnac filters. Second, we will discuss multi-segment all-PM fiber ring lasers based on the fiber comb filters to demonstrate the concept of tunable multi-wavelength laser sources with continuous tuning in absolute wavelength and discrete tuning in wavelength spacing. The tuning method is based on birefringence filtering properties of a segmented all-PM fiber ring resonator. Based on this method, we show a discrete wavelength spacing of dual-wavelength output from 0.9 to 2.5 nm and continuous wavelength tuning over 10 nm. The demonstrated lasers can be easily modified to tune over a greater wavelength spacing and absolute wavelength range.