Title :
Picosecond pulses from an Er/Yb waveguide laser passively mode-locked with a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror
Author :
Thoen, E.R. ; Koontz, E.M. ; Jones, D.J. ; Langlois, P. ; Kartner, F.X. ; Ippen, E.P. ; Kolodziejski, L.A. ; Barbier, D.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
Abstract :
Summary form only given. Semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors have been used to passively mode-lock a variety of solid state and fiber lasers. Fiber lasers typically operate at low fundamental repetition rates because of Er-doping density limits in fiber. A mode-locked fiber laser based on an Er/Yb codoped waveguide amplifier has been demonstrated, although with a P-APM mode-locking mechanism that is not scalable to short cavity lengths. Here, a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror is used for the first time to produce pulses as short as 1 ps at repetition rates of 25-100 MHz from a mode-locked Er/Yb waveguide laser in a linear cavity configuration that is scalable to very high repetition rates.
Keywords :
erbium; laser mirrors; laser mode locking; optical fibre amplifiers; optical saturable absorption; ytterbium; 1 ps; 25 to 100 MHz; Er/Yb codoped waveguide amplifier; Er/Yb waveguide laser; low fundamental repetition rates; passively mode-locked; picosecond pulses; r-doping density limits; saturable absorber mirror; Erbium; Fiber lasers; Laser mode locking; Mirrors; Optical pulses; Pulse amplifiers; Semiconductor lasers; Semiconductor waveguides; Solid state circuits; Waveguide lasers;
Conference_Titel :
Lasers and Electro-Optics, 1999. CLEO '99. Summaries of Papers Presented at the Conference on
Conference_Location :
Baltimore, MD, USA
Print_ISBN :
1-55752-595-1
DOI :
10.1109/CLEO.1999.834108
