Disordered microstructure polymer optical fiber for stabilized coherent random fiber laser

Abstract

We have demonstrated the realization of a random polymer fiber laser (RPFL) based on laser dye Pyrromethene 597-doped one-dimensional disordered polymer optical fiber (POF). The stabilized coherent laser action for the disordered POF has been obtained by the weak optical multiple scattering of the polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxanes nanoparticles in the core of the POF in situ formed during polymerization, which was enhanced by the waveguide confinement effect. Meanwhile, the threshold of our RPFL system is almost one order of magnitude lower than that of the liquid core random fiber laser reported previously, which promotes the development of random lasers.

Recent advances in fundamentals and applications of random fiber lasers

“…The rich variety of demonstrated random fiber lasers is due to a combination of several factors: (a) the numbers of possible laser system configurations (tunable operation ( [28,50]), filter-based configurations [49,51,64], half-open cavity setups [34,70], and others; (b) various gain mechanisms [73,90,95]; (c) varied output wavelengths [45,52,67,70,81,157]; (d) different operational regimes (CW, pulsating [106,107]), Q-switched random fiber lasers [158]; and (e) a range of fiber bases [37,45,68,103]. 175 km Φ-OTDR with hybrid distributed amplification: (a) experimental setup and (b) calculated Rayleigh backscattering signal in the case of an ultralong Raman fiber laser (URFL) configuration and the configuration based on a random fiber laser with hybrid distributed amplification (HDA).…”

“…The onset of coherence was attributed to the confinement effect of the waveguide itself, which increased the probability of multiple scattering of the photons within the colloidal suspension. More control over the lasing properties was obtained by embedding the dye and the scattering nanoparticles in a polymer optical fiber in a bottom-up approach [103,104]. More recently, a liquid-filled hollow fiber configuration was used [105] to realize a plasmonic random laser, where they replaced the POSS scattering centers with gold nanoparticles.…”

Powerful narrow linewidth random fiber laser

“…Random lasing was demonstrated in the photonic crystal fiber with the hollow core filled with a suspension of TiO 2 nanoparticles [7], polymer optical fibers [8], and rare-earth doped fiber with randomly spaced gratings [9].…”

Random spaced index modulation for a narrow linewidth tunable fiber laser with low intensity noise

“…The fiber geometry provides transverse confinement of light waves and effectively one-dimensional random feedback either by intrinsic inhomogeneity, e.g., Rayleigh scattering [6-9], or induced randomness such as a photonic crystal fiber filled with a suspension structure [10], Bragg gratings in rare-earthdoped fiber [11,12], and polymer optical fiber [13]. There are two kinds of random fiber lasers based on Er-doped fiber as gain, Brillouin gain or Raman gain.…”