In this review paper, we describe the current state of the art to stabilize the output radiation of ultrashort-pulse (USP) fiber lasers and analyze passive methods to reduce the magnitude of fluctuations in the amplitude–frequency noise of output radiation. Regarding main noise characterization in mode-locked fiber lasers, we further consider the influence on laser operation of primary generation regimes starting up in cavities, such as solitons, stretched pulses, similaritons, and dissipative solitons. Then, we proceed to analyze the external and internal factors that affect the stability of the output radiation characteristics depending on the mode-locking mechanism and the resonator scheme.
We have studied the generation of low-noise ultrashort multibound solitons in the telecommunication spectral window in an erbium-doped all-fiber ring laser with a highlynonlinear resonator mode-locked by a nonlinear polarization evolution effect. The multibound soliton generation is obtained with more than 20 bound dechirped pulses with a duration of ~ 240 fs at a repetition rate of ~ 11.3 MHz (with a signal-to-noise ratio of ~ 73.3 dB), the relative intensity noise is <-140 dBc/Hz, and the Allan deviation of the repetition frequency does not exceed ~1.3•10-8 with a time averaging window of ~ 100 s.
We have studied the ultrafast saturation behavior of a high-density well-aligned single-walled carbon nanotubes saturable absorber (HDWA-SWCNT SA), obtained by a high-pressure and high-temperature treatment of commercially available single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and related it to femtosecond erbium-doped fiber laser performance. We have observed the polarization dependence of a nonlinear optical saturation, along with a low saturation energy level of <1 fJ, limited to the detector threshold used, and the ultrafast response time of <250 fs, while the modulation depth was approximately 12%. We have obtained the generation of ultrashort stretched pulses with a low mode-locking launching threshold of ~100 mW and an average output power of 12.5 mW in an erbium-doped ring laser with the hybrid mode-locking of a VDVA-SWNT SA in combination with the effects of nonlinear polarization evolution. Dechirped pulses with a duration of 180 fs were generated, with a repetition rate of about 42.22 MHz. The average output power standard deviation was about 0.06% RMS during 3 h of measurement.
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