Different mode-locking methods in high energy all-normal dispersion Yb femtosecond all-fiber lasers

Abstract

Ultrafast all-fiber oscillators are currently one of the most rapidly developing laser technologies. Many advantages like: environmental stability, low sensitivity to misalignment, excellent beam quality (intrinsic single transverse mode operation), high energy and an excellent active medium efficiency make them the lasers of choice for a variety of applications. In this paper the designs of all-fiber all-normal dispersion femtosecond lasers are described. Due to large positive chirp, the pulses inside the cavity are highly stretched in time and they can achieve higher energies with the same peak power as shorter pulses. High insensitivity to mechanical perturbations or temperature drift is another highly valued property of presented configurations. Two of reported lasers are extremely stable due to the fact that their cavities are built entirely of polarization maintaining fibers and optical elements.We used highly Yb 3+ ions doped fibers as an active medium pumped by a fiber coupled 976 nm laser diode. The central wavelength of our laser oscillators was 1030 nm. Three methods of passive mode-locking in all-fiber cavities were studied. In particular, the designs with Nonlinear Polarization Evolution (NPE), Nonlinear Optical Loop Mirror (NOLM) and Nonlinear Amplifying Loop Mirror (NALM) as artificial saturable absorbers were investigated. The most attention was paid to all-PM-fiber configurations. We present two self-starting, high energy, all-fiber configurations: one delivering pulses with energy of 4.3 nJ and dechirped pulse duration of 150 fs based on the NALM and another with a 6.8 nJ, 390 fs pulses in configuration with the NOLM. The influence of different artificial saturable absorber on output pulse characteristics were studied and analyzed.