A digital micromirror device (DMD) is a kind of widely used spatial light modulator. We apply DMD as wavelength selector in tunable fiber lasers. Based on the two-dimensional diffraction theory, the diffraction of DMD and its effect on properties of fiber laser parameters are analyzed in detail. The theoretical results show that the diffraction efficiency is strongly dependent upon the angle of incident light and the pixel spacing of DMD. Compared with the other models of DMDs, the 0.55 in. DMD grating is an approximate blazed state in our configuration, which makes most of the diffracted radiation concentrated into one order. It is therefore a better choice to improve the stability and reliability of tunable fiber laser systems.

Based on a digital micromirror device (DMD) processor as the multi-wavelength narrow-band tunable filter, we demonstrate a multi-port tunable fiber laser through experiments. The key property of this laser is that any lasing wavelength channel from any arbitrary output port can be switched independently over the whole C-band, which is only driven by single DMD chip flexibly. All outputs display an excellent tuning capacity and high consistency in the whole C-band with a 0.02 nm linewidth, 0.055 nm wavelength tuning step, and side-mode suppression ratio greater than 60 dB. Due to the automatic power control and polarization design, the power uniformity of output lasers is less than 0.008 dB and the wavelength fluctuation is below 0.02 nm within 2 h at room temperature.

Abstract:A tunable from the C-band polarization-maintaining single-mode fiber laser is proposed based on a MEMS processor. The MEMS processor can select any part of the gain spectrum from the EDFA into a fiber ring, leading to a high-quality laser output.

Wang Tao(王 涛) a) † , Sang Xin-Zhu(桑新柱) a) , Yan Bin-Bin(颜玢玢) a) , Ai Qi(艾 琪) b) , Li Yan(李 妍) a) , Chen Xiao(陈 笑) b) , Zhang Ying(张 颖) b) , Chen Gen-Xiang(陈根祥) b) , Song Fei-Jun(宋菲君) a) , Zhang Xia(张 霞) a) , Wang Kui-Ru(王葵如) a) , Yuan Jin-Hui(苑金辉) a) , Yu Chong-Xiu(余重秀) a) , Xiao Feng(肖 峰) c) , and Alameh Kamal c) a) State

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