Simultaneous four-wavelength lasing oscillations in an erbium-doped fiber laser with two high birefringence fiber Bragg gratings

Abstract

A novel multiwavelength erbium-doped fiber laser configuration is proposed and demonstrated. The laser can produce simultaneous four-wavelength lasing oscillations with a minimum wavelength spacing of only 0.36 nm in C-band via using two fiber Bragg gratings written in high birefringence fiber, while ensuring fairly stable room-temperature operation. The laser can also achieve switching modes among four wavelengths by simple adjustment of two polarization controllers in the cavities. Theconfiguration is based on the polarization hole burning and overlapping cavities principle. The laser has the advantages of simple all-fiber configuration, low cost, high stability and operating at room temperature.

Orthogonal polarization mode coupling for pure twisted polarization maintaining fiber Bragg gratings

“…The reflected beam is thus composed by wave b 1 and b 2 which come from their corresponding orthogonal input polarization modes a 2 and a 1 . It is convinced that the middle peak is mainly attributed to the cross coupling between the two polarization modes induced by the torsion as described by the deduced CME (7). Such a phenomenon may be used as a twisting sensor.…”

“…Furthermore multi-axis strain sensors also are realized [3][4][5]. Since two orthogonal polarization modes are reflected at different wavelengths by the PM-FBG, it is widely used to develop fiber lasers with outputs of multiple wavelengths and single linearly polarization [6][7][8]. The characteristics of PM-FBG and related mechanisms have been analyzed theoretically based on the coupled mode theory in Refs.…”

Tunable Dual-Wavelength Laser Scheme by Optical-Injection Fabry-Perot Laser Diode

“…The PC between FP-LD and OCP is used to control the polarization state of the feedback injection light into the FP-LD. According to the past self-injected report (Liu et al, 2004), only one polarized direction being parallel to the TE-mode of FP-LD of feedback wavelength leads to the maximum self-injected efficiency. In the experiment, the mode spacing (Δλ) and threshold current of FP-LD are 1.3 nm and 10 mA, respectively.…”

“…Tunable and stable multiwavelength fiber lasers are important and attractive in recent years because of their potential applications in wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) technique (Das et al, 2002;Slavik et al, 2002), optical code-division multiple-access (OCDMA) technique (Barmenkov et al, 2008;Alvarez-Chavez et al, 2007), fiber sensor system (Chou et al, 2008;, and optical instrument measuring (Talaverano et al, 2001;Nilsson et al, 1996) and testing (Liu et al, 2004;Li et al, 1998). Different techniques for the reduction of wavelength competition have been used to achieve stable multiwavelength oscillations.…”

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].…”