Multiwavelength Erbium-Doped Fiber Laser Employing Cavity Loss Modulation

Author

Feng, Xinhuan ; Tam, Hwa Yaw ; Lu, Chao ; Wai, P.K.A. ; Guan, Baiou

Author_Institution

Inst. of Photonics Technol., Jinan Univ., Guangzhou, China

Volume

21

Issue

18

fYear

2009

Firstpage

1314

Lastpage

1316

Abstract

A novel and simple multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber laser is proposed and demonstrated. The combination of a polarization scrambler and a polarizer is employed to induce polarization-dependent-loss modulation. The loss modulation induced multiwavelength lasing by alleviating the mode competition caused by homogeneous gain broadening of the erbium-doped fiber. As a result, 11-wavelength lasing operation with wavelength spacing of 0.8 nm has been achieved. The output power distribution is quite uniform and the power fluctuation of each wavelength is smaller than 0.6 dB.

Keywords

erbium; fibre lasers; laser cavity resonators; optical fibre losses; optical fibre polarisation; optical modulation; JkJk:Er; cavity loss modulation; homogeneous gain broadening; loss modulation induced multiwavelength lasing; multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber laser; output power distribution; polarization scrambler; polarization-dependent loss modulation; polarizer; power fluctuation; Erbium-doped fiber lasers (EDFLs); loss modulation; multiwavelength fiber lasers; polarization-dependent loss (PDL);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2009.2026433

Filename

5161321