Configurable three-wavelength Raman fiber laser for Raman amplification and dynamic gain flattening

A three-wavelength Raman fiber laser is presented that is suitable for the generation of a flattened Raman gain curve over a broad range of extended telecommunications bandwidths. This laser utilizes an 1100-nm Yb-doped cladding pumped fiber laser and a cascaded Raman resonator to generate output radiation at 1427, 1454, and 1480 nm. The slope efficiency for conversion from the 1100- to 14xx-nm radiation is 0.38, the total output power is 1.1 W, and the fiber laser "wall-plug" efficiency is 0.10. The output power at 1454 and 1480 nm is adjusted by varying the reflectivity of the fiber grating output couplers and the suppression of lower order spectral components is between 15 and 20 dB. Low frequency relative intensity noise (RIN) measurements indicate RIN values less than -90 dB/Hz below 100 kHz.