Abstract:A novel, programmable, mode-locked fiber laser design is presented and numerically demonstrated. The laser programmability is enabled by an intracavity optical phase-only pulse shaper, which utilizes the same linearly chirped fiber Bragg grating (LC-FBG) from its two opposite ends to perform real-time optical Fourier transformation. A binary bit-pattern generator (BPG) operating at 20-Gb/s and producing a periodic sequence of 32 bits every 1.6 ns, is subsequently used to drive an optical phase modulator inside… Show more
“…This well-established and quite affordable type of laser features a unique design flexibility and excellent performance in terms of energy efficiency, beam quality, and noise. Various intracavity methods for the manipulation of pulse shaping (by means of in-cavity spectral and phase shapers) were proposed for passively [6][7][8][9][10] and actively mode-locked fiber lasers [11,12]. However, studies of pulse shaping capabilities of those methods were limited to a few shapes.…”
We demonstrate the possibility of the accurate direct laser synthesis of high-energy arbitrary optical waveforms by the programmable driving of partial cavity dumping in a specific continuous-wave fiber laser. To this effect we have developed an original hybrid laser configuration which integrates two different active media. The first medium, a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA), acts as a saturated lumped preamplifier. It features a relatively fast (sub-nanosecond) gain recovery, and thus effectively suppresses the intracavity power fluctuations induced by cavity dumping. The second active medium, an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA), acts mainly as a booster amplifier. This distributed inertial amplifying medium effectively accumulates pump energy, thereby providing an enhancement of output energy upon cavity dumping. Our simple proof-of-concept laser setup has allowed the synthesis of nanosecond arbitrary optical waveforms with an energy up to 40 nJ and arbitrarily tunable repetition rate. The proposed combination of a slow (EDFA) and fast (SOA) amplifying stages prevents the laser from strong relaxation oscillations and power flux fluctuations which essentially restrict cavity dumping in conventional rare-earth-doped fiber lasers. The applied two-stage intracavity spectral filtering ensures spectral purity of a rather narrowband (⩽0.1 nm) laser output. For the purpose considered, the integrated SOA-EDFA laser configuration is preferable to a conventional architecture ‘master oscillator—power amplifier’ whose nonlinear gain can obstruct the accurate synthesis of high-energy optical waveforms.
“…This well-established and quite affordable type of laser features a unique design flexibility and excellent performance in terms of energy efficiency, beam quality, and noise. Various intracavity methods for the manipulation of pulse shaping (by means of in-cavity spectral and phase shapers) were proposed for passively [6][7][8][9][10] and actively mode-locked fiber lasers [11,12]. However, studies of pulse shaping capabilities of those methods were limited to a few shapes.…”
We demonstrate the possibility of the accurate direct laser synthesis of high-energy arbitrary optical waveforms by the programmable driving of partial cavity dumping in a specific continuous-wave fiber laser. To this effect we have developed an original hybrid laser configuration which integrates two different active media. The first medium, a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA), acts as a saturated lumped preamplifier. It features a relatively fast (sub-nanosecond) gain recovery, and thus effectively suppresses the intracavity power fluctuations induced by cavity dumping. The second active medium, an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA), acts mainly as a booster amplifier. This distributed inertial amplifying medium effectively accumulates pump energy, thereby providing an enhancement of output energy upon cavity dumping. Our simple proof-of-concept laser setup has allowed the synthesis of nanosecond arbitrary optical waveforms with an energy up to 40 nJ and arbitrarily tunable repetition rate. The proposed combination of a slow (EDFA) and fast (SOA) amplifying stages prevents the laser from strong relaxation oscillations and power flux fluctuations which essentially restrict cavity dumping in conventional rare-earth-doped fiber lasers. The applied two-stage intracavity spectral filtering ensures spectral purity of a rather narrowband (⩽0.1 nm) laser output. For the purpose considered, the integrated SOA-EDFA laser configuration is preferable to a conventional architecture ‘master oscillator—power amplifier’ whose nonlinear gain can obstruct the accurate synthesis of high-energy optical waveforms.
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