We report on the observation of a new phenomenon occurring in a fiber ring laser. This phenomenon is about the transition from an initially bidirectional emission of a reciprocal fiber ring laser to a unidirectional emission at a certain pump power threshold. In addition, the final direction is not predefined but appears to be randomly chosen every time the threshold is exceeded. Therefore, we term this new phenomenon direction instability. Furthermore, we provide a first discussion of how the instability threshold is influenced by the length and the loss of the cavity. We show that the threshold follows a power times length scaling, indicating a nonlinear origin.
We recently demonstrated unidirectional lasing in a reciprocal all fiber ring laser at full laser operation. With this manuscript we discuss the influence of length and fiber loss on the triggering of unidirectional lasing in this fiber ring laser.
Recently we demonstrated unidirectional lasing in a reciprocal all fiber ring laser. The phenomenon is threshold dependent and both the final direction and threshold can be influenced through loss management of the ring.
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