Stable and uniform multi-wavelength fiber laser based on hybrid Raman and Erbium-doped fiber gains

Abstract

A stable and uniform multi-wavelength fiber laser based on the hybrid gain of a dispersion compensating fiber (as the Raman gain medium) and an Erbium-doped fiber (EDF) is introduced. The gain competition effects in the fiber Raman amplification (FRA) and EDF amplification are analyzed and compared experimentally. The FRA gain mechanism can suppress the gain competition effectively and make the present multi-wavelength laser stable at room temperature. The hybrid gain medium can also increase the lasing bandwidth (as compared with a pure EDF laser) and the power conversion efficiency (as compared with a pure fiber Raman laser).

Switchable dual-wavelength erbium-doped fibre laser utilizing two-channel fibre Bragg grating fabricated by femtosecond laser

“…By cooling EDF in liquid nitrogen, the homogeneous line broadening of EDF can be reduced [4], but such an approach is not suitable for practical use. To realize stable multiwavelength fibre laser at room temperature, various techniques have been developed, such as incorporating a frequency shifter [5], employing hybrid gain medium [6], [7], use of nonlinear polarization rotation [8], using highly nonlinear fibre [9], and most recently, by means of microfibre [10].…”

Multi-Wavelength Fiber Optical Parametric Oscillator Based on a Highly Nonlinear Fiber and a Sagnac Loop Filter

“…Fiber lasers are one kind of the most important lasers, which also include multi-wavelength fiber lasers (MWFLs) with a huge potential in applications such as WDM optical communication systems, optical fiber sensors, optical component testing, microwave photonics and spectroscopy [20][21][22][23]. A great variety of MWFLs have been well developed based on various optical amplifiers including Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) [24][25][26][27][28][29], fiber Raman amplifiers (FRAs) [30][31][32][33], fiber Brillouin amplifiers (FBAs) [34][35][36] and semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) [37][38][39][40] in the past several years. Thereinto, multi-wavelength Erbium-doped fiber lasers (MW-EDFLs) have been widely investigated due to their advantages such as low cost, low threshold, high power conversion efficiency and compatibility with the optical fiber communication system.…”

“…Thereinto, multi-wavelength Erbium-doped fiber lasers (MW-EDFLs) have been widely investigated due to their advantages such as low cost, low threshold, high power conversion efficiency and compatibility with the optical fiber communication system. However, special approaches such as using the four wave mixing (WFM) effect of special fibers [25][26][27], the hybrid gain [28], or the frequency-shifted feedback technique [29] should be employed to achieve stable multi-wavelength lasing since MW-EDFLs are not stable at room temperature due to the strong homogenous line broadening and cross-saturation gain of the Erbiumdoped fiber (EDF) [41]. The multi-wavelength Raman fiber laser has not been considered as a promising MWFL due to the limited gain bandwidth of the FRA.…”

Tunable multi-wavelength fiber lasers based on an Opto-VLSI processor and optical amplifiers

“…In addition, multiple wavelength lasers based on the use of Raman amplifiers are also impractical because they require several pump lasers of very high power levels. Recently, new approaches have been employed to realize multi-wavelength fiber lasers, such as the cooling of the EDF to 77 K by liquid nitrogen [4], the use of a frequencyshifted feedback technique within the laser cavities [5,6], the combination of different gain media within the same laser cavity [7,8], and the introduction of high nonlinearity or polarization hole burning elements into the laser cavity [9][10][11][12].…”