Wavelength switchable multiwavelength actively mode-locked fiber-ring laser based on highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber and multimode fiber Bragg grating

Abstract

A wavelength switchable multiwavelength actively mode-locked fiber-ring laser based on highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber (PCF) and polarization-dependent mode coupling to multimode-fiber Bragg grating (MMFBG) is proposed. Twenty meters of highly nonlinear dispersion-shifted PCF (DS-PCF) is inserted into the fiber ring cavity to suppress gain competition through the four-wave-mixing (FWM) effect. A mode scrambler is attached to the multimode fiber (MMF) to introduce a polarization-dependent mode coupling to the MMFBG. Through changing polarization in the cavity, stable and switchable one-wavelength, two-wavelength (wavelength spacing of 0.8 and 2.4 nm), and three-wavelength simultaneously actively mode-locked optical pulse trains at a repetition rate of 5 GHz are obtained. We show that high nonlinearity introduced by the nonlinear PCF in the cavity can improve significantly supermode suppression ratio (SMSR) of the multiwavelength pulses generated and a sidemode suppression ratio (SMSR) of 58 dB is realized.