Hybrid electronically addressable random fiber laser

Abstract

We report here a novel architecture for a random fiber laser exploiting the combination of a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and an erbium doped fiber (EDF). The EDF was optically biased by a continuous wave pump laser, whereas the SOA was arranged in a fiber loop-mirror and driven by nanosecond duration current pulses. Laser pulses were obtained by synchronizing the SOA driver to the returning amplified Rayleigh back-scattered light from a selected short section of the EDF. By tuning the SOA pulse rate, random lasing was achieved by addressing selected meter-long sections of the 81-m long EDF, which was open-ended. Laser oscillation can be potentially obtained with SOA modulation frequencies from several kHz to the MHz regime. We discuss the mechanism leading to the hybrid random laser emission, connecting with phase sensitive optical time domain reflectometry and envision potential applications of this electronically addressable random laser.

Brillouin-like effects in rare-earth-doped bi-directional optical fiber amplifiers

“…The PIDG analog of the forward Brillouin scattering in optical fibers [66][67][68][69][70][71] could be of particular interest for further studies due to its enormous potential for practical applications in soliton fiber lasers as the method enabling the stabilization of harmonically mode-locked laser operation and super-mode noise reduction [72][73][74][75][76][77] . New mechanisms are important as well for designers of the Brillouin and random fiber lasers [78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93] demanded in many applications in microwave photonics, data centers and atomic clocks. Translating the fiber system design to integrated photonics could dramatically reduce the footprint for many these applications 94-97 .…”

Perspectives and recent advances in super-resolution spectroscopy: Stochastic and disordered-based approaches

“…Additionally, alternative pumping schemes (e.g., electric, CW optical pumping) would be desirable to avoid the need of optical pulsed pumping of the random laser. While current electrically-pumped random laser sources still are hampered by a lower degree of randomness and sparsity in their emission lines, important progress has recently been made in this direction [44][45][46].…”

A random optical parametric oscillator

“…An exception was recently reported in ref. 19 , where the cavity length was much longer than the pulse width. Authors made use of Rayleigh feedback in a short fibre section determined by the pulse width to achieve coherent emission.…”