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We report an original noise-like pulse dynamics observed in a figure-eight fiber laser, in which fragments are continually released from a main waveform that circulates in the cavity. Particularly, we report two representative cases of the dynamics: in the first case the released fragments drift away from the main bunch and decay over a fraction of the round-trip time, and then vanish suddenly; in the second case, the sub-packets drift without decaying over the complete cavity round-trip time, until they eventually merge again with the main waveform. The most intriguing result is that these fragments, as well as the main waveform, are formed of units with sub-ns duration and roughly the same energy.

In this work, we study a 215-m-long figure-of-eight fiber laser including a double-clad erbium-ytterbium fiber and a nonlinear optical loop mirror based on nonlinear polarization evolution. For proper adjustments, self-starting passive mode-locking is obtained. Measurements show that the mode-locked pulses actually are noise-like pulses, by analyzing the autocorrelation, scope traces and the very broad and flat spectrum extending over a record bandwidth of more than 200 nm, beyond the 1750 nm upper wavelength limit of the optical spectrum analyzer. Noise-like pulsing was observed for moderate and high pump power preserving the same behavior, reaching pulse energies as high as 300 nJ, with pulse durations of a few tens of ns and a coherence length in the order of 1 ps. Stable fundamental mode locking as well as harmonic mode locking up to the 6th order were observed. The bandwidth was further extended to more than 450 nm when a 100-m piece of highly nonlinear fiber was inserted at the laser output. The enhanced performances obtained compared to other similar schemes could be related to the absence of a polarizer in the present setup, so that the state of polarization along the cavity is no longer restricted.

In this paper, we study noise-like pulse generation in a km-long fibre ring laser including a doubleclad erbium-ytterbium fibre and passively mode-locked through nonlinear polarization evolution. Although single noise-like pulsing is only observed at moderate pump power, pulse energies as high as 120 nJ are reached in this regime. For higher pump power, the pulse splits into several noise-like pulses, which then rearrange into a stable and periodic pulse train. Harmonic mode locking from the 2nd to the 48th orders is readily obtained. At pump powers close to the damage threshold of the setup, much denser noise-like pulse trains are demonstrated, reaching harmonic orders beyond 1200 and repetition frequencies in excess of a quarter of a GHz. The mechanisms leading to noise-like pulse breaking and stable high-order harmonic mode locking are discussed.

In this work we study multiple noise-like pulse generation in a 320 m long passively mode-locked erbium-doped figure-eight fibre laser in the normal net dispersion regime. The nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM) that is used as a mode locker operates through polarization asymmetry, which allows us to control its switching power by birefringence adjustments at the NOLM input, using a half-wave retarder (HWR). Over some range of the HWR orientation, a single noise-like pulse is observed in the cavity. Its peak power is adjustable as it remains clamped to the variable switching power, and its duration varies inversely between ∼5 and ∼22 ps. Beyond the HWR position, corresponding to the longest duration, the pulse splits into several noise-like pulses. These multiple pulses usually present a walkoff, however they can be synchronized through slight birefringence adjustments, although they are not evenly spaced in time. Up to 12 simultaneous noise-like pulses were observed experimentally, with a duration of ∼2 ns. Multiple pulsing and synchronization of the pulses are interpreted in terms of mechanisms of interaction between pulses. Multiple pulsing appears to be indirectly related to the peak power limiting effect of the NOLM.

In this paper a tunable multi-wavelength erbium doped fiber laser, based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer, is presented. Here the interferometer is achieved by splicing a piece of photonic crystal fiber (PCF) between two segments of a single-mode fiber. The laser can emit a single, double, triple or quadruple line, which can be tuned from 1530 to 1556 nm by controlling the polarization state. Finally it is shown, by experimental results, that the laser has high stability at room temperature.

We report on the dynamics of noise-like pulses at the ns scale in a passively mode-locked fibre laser, which grow in complexity as wave retarder adjustments are performed. We can observe that the laser operating in the fundamental mode can be tuned to get different shapes of the noise-like pulse. Following a regime of a very stable waveform, regimes characterized by a much more variable (but still compact) waveform are observed. Then we can get the fragmentation of the main bunch and expulsion of sub-packets and, finally, a variety of puzzling dynamics with increasing complexity are evidenced. Although the collective behaviour of the multiple waveforms is at first sight random we can observe some well-defined patterns in the kinematics of light bunches at the global cavity scale. These results may be useful to unravel the subtle mechanisms at play in complex dissipative nonlinear systems such as passively mode-locked fibre lasers.