Mode-locked Thulium-doped Fiber Laser Research Articles

Semiconducting Polymer Dots as Saturable Absorbers for Mode-Locked Thulium-Doped Fiber Lasers

We demonstrated an all-fiber passively mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser (TDFL) using organic semiconducting polymer dots (Pdots) based saturable absorber (SA). The Pdots are prepared by methods of donor-acceptor moieties and reprecipitation, which possess a broadband absorption from 400 to 2200 nm and nonlinear saturable absorption property at 2 μm. By depositing the Pdots onto the microfiber as an SA, long nonlinear interaction length of evanescent wave and Pots can be achieved. An ultrafast fiber laser operating at 1926 nm was observed. The output power could reach to 76.2 mW at the maximum pump power of 2.1 W. Compared with Pdot-film SAs in our previous work, these experimental results verify that PdotSAs functioned with evanescent field interaction are promising nonlinear optical modulators for ultrafast and high-power pulse generation.

High-power mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser with tungsten ditelluride as saturable absorber.

A passively mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser using a tungsten ditelluride saturable absorber (${{\rm WTe}_2}\mbox{-}{\rm SA}$WTe2-SA) is demonstrated. High-power mode-locked pulses with an average output power of 108.1 mW were achieved by incorporating the ${{\rm WTe}_2}\mbox{-}{\rm SA}$WTe2-SA into a thulium-doped fiber oscillator. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest average power obtained from a ${{\rm WTe}_2}\mbox{-}{\rm SA}$WTe2-SA-based fiber laser. We further amplified the output power to 5.60 W with an all-fiber thulium-doped double-cladding fiber amplifier. Our result indicates that ${{\rm WTe}_2}\mbox{-}{\rm SA}$WTe2-SA could be an excellent candidate for a high-power fiber laser system.

High Energy Noise-Like Pulse Generation from a Mode-Locked Thulium-Doped Fiber Laser at 1.7 μm

Thulium-doped fiber laser (TDFL) is a versatile platform that can be engineered to produce laser sources with desired performance that target a vast number of applications, however its operation in the 1.7-μm region is still underdeveloped owing to the quasi-three-level nature of TDF emission. In this paper, we report a high energy noise-like pulse generation from a nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) mode-locked TDFL. By using highly efficient core-pumping at 1650 nm and intra-cavity filtering component, stable mode-locking operation at 1750 nm is realized at a pump threshold of 1.5 W. With increasing the pump power to 5 W, the pulse width is stretched from 0.8 ns to 3.7 ns, while the monitored output power is linearly increased from 50 mW to 251 mW, corresponding to a maximum pulse energy of 321 nJ at the pulse repetition rate of 782 kHz. The long-term and shot-to-shot stability of the output are characterized to be 0.11 dB and 2.8% respectively. Noise-like pulse operation of the laser is confirmed by measuring the autocorrelation trace, which demonstrates a coherent peak on top of a wide pedestal. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of high energy noise-like pulse generation from a TDFL at 1.7-μm band, enabling potential applications in for example spectroscopic analysis and material processing.

Noise-Like Pulse Generation Using Polarization Maintaining Mode-Locked Thulium-Doped Fiber Laser With Nonlinear Amplifying Loop Mirror

We investigate noise-like pulse (NLP) generation in a mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser with nonlinear amplifying loop mirror (NALM) and different net anomalous dispersions. The all-polarization maintaining (PM) fiber oscillator generates pulse trains with a frequency adjustable in the range of 4.06-20.4 MHz by utilizing different lengths of PM passive fiber in the NALM loop. An NLP with a coherence spike width of 232 fs was generated at 1993.6 nm with a 3-dB spectral width of 32.6 nm when the net cavity dispersion was -0.711 ps <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> .

Generation of dispersion-managed solitons with sidebands in a 2-μm mode-locked fiber laser

We have experimentally obtained dispersion-managed solitons with sidebands in a passively mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser. The stable single soliton with sidebands can be converted into two soliton pulses at the pump power of 867 mW with appropriate settings of the polarization controllers (PCs). By increasing the pump power and cautiously adjusting the PCs, the three, four, and five soliton pulses with nonuniform intensity operate with stability in the cavity due to the global soliton interaction caused by unstable continuous waves. Furthermore, the soliton bunch can be observed at the pump power of 1 W. The position of solitons in the soliton bunch is random with a fixed separation that is controllable by changing the linear phase delay. Our work gives insight into the dynamics of multipulse dispersion-managed solitons in a 2-μm mode-locked fiber laser.

All fiber mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser using a novel femtosecond-laser-inscribed 45°-plane-by-plane-tilted fiber grating

Using the novel 45°-plane-by-plane-tilted fiber grating inscribed by a femtosecond laser as an in-line fiber polarizer, we demonstrate an all-fiber passively mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser. We characterize the grating for polarization-dependent loss, indicating high contrast and broad operating wavelength. The 45°-tilted fiber grating together with polarization controller act as an artificial saturable absorber suitable for mode-locking through nonlinear polarization rotation. By properly pre-adjusting the polarization controller, stable mode-locking is achieved for a pump power in the range of 300 mW–400 mW at 1565 nm. Owing to the net anomalous dispersion, a stable mode-locked soliton pulse centered at 1870 nm with a pulse width of 862 fs is reported at a fundamental repetition rate of 22.34 MHz. A long-term stability test reveals that the laser is quite stable for 24 h under laboratory conditions, confirming the capabilities of the 45°-tilted fiber grating for stable laser operation.

Broadband tuning of a long-cavity all-fiber mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser using an acousto-optic bandpass filter

A long-cavity passively mode-locked thulium-doped all-fiber laser is reported incorporating a tapered acousto-optic tunable bandpass filter (AOTBF). The operation of the AOTBF relies on the intermodal coupling between core and cladding modes when a flexural acoustic wave propagates along an 80μm tapered fiber. The filter works in transmission and exhibits a 3dB bandwidth of 9.02nm with an insertion loss of 3.4dB. The laser supports ultrashort pulse generation at a low repetition rate of 784.93kHz. Optical pulses with 2.43nm of optical bandwidth and 2.1ps pulse duration were obtained in a broad tuning range from 1824.77 to 1905.16nm.

Pulse dynamics manipulation by the phase bias in a nonlinear fiber amplifying loop mirror.

Pulse dynamics controlling is of great importance for high quality pulse generation in ultra-short pulse fiber lasers. The pulse quality characteristics in terms of pulse duration, energy, chirp profile, tunability, as well as noise feature substantially depend on intracavity pulse propagation dynamics. Here we found that a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser can switch among enabling operation conventional soliton, stretched-pulse soliton and dissipative soliton regimes only by manipulating an intracavity phase bias device. This provides a simple approach to tailoring ultra-short laser characteristics to different applications.

Q-switched and mode-locked thulium doped fiber lasers with nickel oxide film saturable absorber

A passively Q-switched and mode-locked fiber laser based on thulium-doped fiber laser (TDFL) cavity was demonstrated utilizing nickel oxide (NiO) nanoparticles as a saturable absorber (SA). The NiO synthesis was carried out by using a facile sonochemical method and the prepared NiO thin film was sandwiched between two optical fiber ferrule connectors in the TDFL ring cavity. By controlling the loss and gain in the cavity, stable Q-switching operation was obtained. The repetition rate and pulse width were tunable from 6.71 kHz to 19.58 kHz and from 9.16 μs to 4.24 μs respectively, at different pump powers, ranging from 528 mW to 711 mW. The Q-switched TDFL was centered at 1900.52 nm and had maximum pulse energy and slope efficiency of 0.31 μJ and 2.58%, respectively. On the other hand, self-starting mode-locked TDFL was achieved by employing 10 m scandium-doped fiber into the ring cavity and remained stable within a pump power range of 821–967 mW. The TDFL mode-locked had a central wavelength of 1928.81 nm, at a threshold pump power of 821 mW. The repetition rate and pulse width were 8.10 MHz and 61.27 ns, respectively, while the slope efficiency was measured to be 2.20 %.

Tunable and switchable harmonic h-shaped pulse generation in a 303 km ultralong mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser

We experimentally demonstrated a type of tunable and switchable harmonic h-shaped pulse generation in a thulium-doped fiber (TDF) laser passively mode locked by using an ultralong nonlinear optical loop mirror. The total cavity length was ∼3.03 km, the longest ever built for a TDF laser to our best knowledge, which resulted in an ultralarge anomalous dispersion over −200 ps2 around the emission wavelength. The produced h-shaped pulse can operate either in a fundamental or in a high-order harmonic mode-locking (HML) state depending on pump power and intra-cavity polarization state (PS). The pulse duration, no matter of the operation state, was tunable with pump power. However, pulse breaking and self-organizing occurred, resulting in high-order HML, when the pump power increased above a threshold. At a fixed pump power, the order of HML was switchable from one to another by manipulating the PS. Switching from the 8th up to the 48th order of HML was achieved with a fixed pump power of ∼4.15 W. Our results revealed the detailed evolution and switching characteristics of the HML and individual pulse envelope with respect to both the pump power and PS. We have also discussed in detail the mechanisms of both the h-shaped pulse generation and the switching of its HML. This contribution would be helpful for further in-depth study on the underlying dynamics of long-duration particular-envelope pulses with ultralarge anomalous dispersion and ultralong roundtrip time.

A passively mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser based on a D-shaped fiber deposited with PbS nanoparticles

A passively mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser with ultra-fast pulse generation based on a D-shaped fiber deposited with PbS nanoparticles.

Mode-locked thulium doped fiber laser with zinc oxide saturable absorber for 2 μm operation

In this work, a 2.0-µm mode-locked thulium doped fiber laser is demonstrated using zinc oxide (ZnO) as the saturable absorber (SA) in a thulium doped fiber laser (TDFL). The ZnO nanorods was prepared by the facile hydrothermal method, and then embedded in polyethylene oxide composite film to form the SA. The laser is capable of generating soliton pulses at a central wavelength of 1945.45 nm with a 3-dB bandwidth of 3.47 nm. The pulse width is measured to be 1.395 ps, only slightly higher than the calculated transform-limited pulse width of 1.15 ps. The peak power of the generated mode-locked pulses is then calculated to be as high as 41.88 W, with a signal-to-noise ratio of 50.5 dB. The fabricated ZnO film in this work would allow the generation of mode-locked pulses, which could be useful for applications in spectroscopy and medicine due to the eye-safe and highly sensitive nature of the 2.0-µm region.

Ultrafast mode-locked dual-wavelength thulium-doped fiber laser using a Mach-Zehnder interferometric filter

A simple and robust method to generate a dual-wavelength mode-locked laser using a tunable Mach-Zehnder filter (TMZF) and a single-wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT) based saturable absorber (SA) is proposed and demonstrated. The proposed laser uses a thulium-doped fiber for lasing in the two-micron region and exploits the interferometric spectrum of the TMZF to produce dual peaks with nearly equal magnitude. SWCNT based SA enables mode-locking at a threshold value of 150.4 mW with distinct dual-wavelength peaks at 1919.2 nm and 1963.7 nm. The peaks have a calculated pulse width of 1.8 ps and 1.6 ps, respectively with a repetition rate of 9.1 MHz with a relatively high optical-signal-to-noise ratio value of 59.1 dB. The output is also observed to remain unchanged over time, indicating high stability. The proposed laser has a promising application, particularly in ultrafast gas molecular spectroscopy and sensing.

Real-time characterization of optical soliton molecule dynamics in an ultrafast thulium fiber laser.

We present an experimental characterization of the internal oscillations, vibrations, and transients of optical soliton molecules generated in a passively mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser. We use custom linearly chirped Bragg grating filters to perform real-time spectral measurement of the ultrafast dynamics at wavelengths around 2μm.

Bidirectional mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser.

We report a bidirectional mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser. Mode-locking is enabled by the combination of semiconductor saturable absorption and nonlinear polarization rotation. Two stable mode-locked picosecond pulse trains in opposite directions are generated with a fundamental repetition rate of ∼16.57 MHz. Output wavelengths are tunable over 35nm.

Low repetition rate passively mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser for LIDAR system

An all-fiber passively mode-locked thulium-doped fiber (TDF) ring laser with a repetition rate of 736 kHz was demonstrated. This is the lowest repetition rate among those of mode-locked TDF lasers to the best of our knowledge. Numerical calculations to find the best solution for successful mode-locking in a highly lossy oscillator were made based on Haus’s master equation with variables such as oscillator loss, small signal gain and modulation depth. Based on the calculation, the laser was configured, where nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) and two stages of TDF amplifier were properly applied. The overall length of oscillator is about 290 m. The output optical spectrum has a FWHM of 28 nm at 2 μm.

Generation and evolution of multiple operation states in passively mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser by using a graphene-covered-microfiber**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11304409 and 61705028), the Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing City, China (Grant Nos. csct2013jcyjA4004 and cstc2017jcyjA0893), the Scientific and Technological Research Program of Chongqing Municipal Education Commission, China (Grant No. KJ1500422), and

Using graphene-covered-microfiber (GCM) as a saturable absorber, the generation and evolution of multiple operation states are proposed and demonstrated in passively mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser. The microfiber was fabricated using the flame brushing method to an interaction length of ∼ 1.2 cm with a waist diameter of ∼ 10 μm. Graphene layers were grown on copper foils by chemical vapor deposition and transferred onto the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to form a PDMS/graphene film, which allowed light-graphene interaction via evanescent field. With the increase of the pump power from 1.25 W to 2.15 W, five different lasing regimes, including continuous-wave, conventional soliton mode-locking, multi-soliton mode-locking, a period of transition, and noise-like mode-locking, were achieved in a fiber ring cavity. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first report of the generation and evolution of multiple operation states by covering graphene on the microfiber in the 2-μm region. The results demonstrate that GCM can be a promising method for fabricating all fiber SA, and the switchable operation states can provide more portability in complex application domain.

Soliton mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser with cobalt oxide saturable absorber

Abstract In this work, we propose and demonstrate a mode-locked thulium doped fiber laser (TDFL) with an integrated cobalt oxide (Co3O4) saturable absorber (SA). The SA is fabricated by suspending Co3O4 nanosheets in a polymer film before being secured between two fiber ferules. The laser operates in the anomalous dispersion regime, confirmed by the Kelly sidebands observed in the obtained optical spectrum. Mode-locking operation is obtained at a low threshold pump power of 77.32 mW, with further optimizations made using a polarization controller The laser generates pulses with a repetition rate of 11.36 MHz and a pulse width of 1.39 ps. The generated pulses are highly stable, with a high signal-to-noise ratio of 46.00 dB and minimum power fluctuations indicating a long-term stability. This work demonstrates a simple and a low-cost laser that would have potential applications for operation near the 2.0-µm region, especially for medical applications.

Broadband and top-flat mid-infrared supercontinuum generation with 3.52\xa0W time-averaged power in a ZBLAN fiber directly pumped by a 2-\xb5m mode-locked fiber laser and amplifier

Supercontinuum generation from 1.87 to 4.03 µm in a ZBLAN fiber is reported. A home-made passively mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser and amplifier, providing 21.4-ps pulses at 81 MHz is used as a pump. The continuum output power is 3.52 W, of which 1.45 and 0.88 W corresponds to wavelengths longer than 3 and 3.5 µm, respectively. A spectrum flatness of 2 dB over a bandwidth of 1710 nm, from 2.02 to 3.73 µm, is also reported. This represents, to our knowledge, the best power conversion in the mid-infrared region and the best spectral flatness for high power supercontinuum generation in ZBLAN fibers directly pumped by 2-µm CW mode-locked fiber lasers and amplifiers.

Multi-wavelength mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser based on a fiber-optic Fabry–Perot interferometer and a nonlinear optical loop mirror

An all-fiberized multi-wavelength mode-locked thulium-doped fiber laser (TDFL) based on fiber-optic Fabry–Perot interferometer (FPI) and nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM) has been presented. The fiber-optic FPI played the roles of wavelength selective filter and output mirror, which constructs by a single mode-hollow core-single mode fiber structure (SMF-HCF-SMF). A NOLM with wavelength-dependent cavity loss was employed to alleviate the mode competition in thulium-doped fiber and enabled the multi-wavelength mode-locking. With proper manipulation of the polarization controller and the pump power, besides the single-wavelength (~1948 nm) fundamental and high orders harmonic mode-locked operations, switchable dual-wavelength (1924.67/1949.16 nm and 1949.64/1972.68 nm) and stable three-wavelength (1924.80/1951.42/1972.14 nm) mode-locked operations are obtained. The multi-wavelength mode-locked TDFL exhibits a good stability with maximum peak power fluctuations of less than 0.5 dB in 2 h.