Abstract
A widely tunable erbium-doped all-fiber laser has been demonstrated. The tunable mechanism is based on a novel tunable filter using multimode interference effects (MMI). The tunable MMI filter was applied to fabricate a tunable erbium-doped fiber laser via a standard ring cavity. A tuning range of 60 nm was obtained, ranging from 1549 nm to 1609 nm, with a signal to noise ratio of 40 dB. The tunable MMI filter mechanism is very simple and inexpensive, but also quite efficient as a wavelength tunable filter.
Highlights
Tunable fiber lasers are attractive because their emission wavelength can be systematically tuned within a certain spectral range
The tunable mechanism is based on a novel tunable filter using multimode interference effects (MMI)
The first attempt to develop a tunable fiber based MMI filter was to incorporate a broadband mirror in front of one of the multimode fiber (MMF) facets while the other is fusion spliced to the single mode fiber (SMF) input
Summary
Tunable fiber lasers are attractive because their emission wavelength can be systematically tuned within a certain spectral range. Techniques using bulk grating [1], fiber Bragg grating [2,3,4], SOA fiber laser based on Sagnac loop mirror via polarization tuning [5], and Fabry Perot cavity [6] have proven to be excellent tunable telecomm sources. By moving the mirror back and forth, the effective length of the MMF is changed and wavelength tuning is achieved Using this effect a tunable ytterbium-doped fiber laser was developed with a tuning range of 8 nm [15]. The tuning mechanism was improved using a goldcoated fiber facet as the mirror and an integrated SU-8 fiber gripper for automatic fiber alignment [16] This modification enhanced the tunable range up to 12.24 nm, the tuning range was limited by the Fabry-Perot resonances created by the cavity formed by the MMF facet and mirror. The device is quite simple and relatively inexpensive when compared with other tuning techniques
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