Characterization and modeling of a dispersive cavity mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser

Summary form only given. Mode-locked erbium-doped fiber lasers are inexpensive compact sources of ultrashort pulses in the 1.55-/spl mu/m wavelength regime. Ultrashort pulse sources have many potential applications including; high-repetition-rate sources for telecommunications, local area networks, or RF digitization. Many passive mode-locking techniques have been presented in the past operating both in normal and anomalous dispersion regimes. Recently semiconductor saturable absorbers in the form of bulk, multiple quantum well (MQW) or single quantum well-saturable Bragg reflector (SBR) have been used to mode-lock linear fiber cavities. Complex Ginzburg-Landau equations have been used to model mode-locked laser operation successfully. We present experimental and numerical simulations of a fiber laser mode-locked by a MQW saturable absorber. Our cavity is high loss and its nonlinear dynamics are dominated by the saturable absorber. We measured the dispersion of the fiber and Bragg gratings as well as the nonlinearity of the MQW saturable absorber. The laser operation is compared with results of simulations, using the measured cavity parameters.