Jean-Noël Maran

Erbium-doped fiber laser simultaneously mode locked on more than 24 wavelengths at room temperature.

We demonstrate simultaneous mode locking of more than 24 wavelengths at 3 GHz in an actively mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser operating at room temperature. The multiwavelength operation is achieved when a frequency shifter and an all-fiber 50-GHz periodic filter are inserted into a ring cavity. Active mode locking is performed with an amplitude modulator, and pulses with a FWHM of 30 ps are obtained.

C-band multi-wavelength frequency-shifted erbium-doped fiber laser

We demonstrate the operation of a CW multi-wavelength erbium-doped fiber laser covering the whole C-band. The laser system consists of a frequency-shifted ring cavity with a new type of periodic filter, namely a fiber Bragg grating array. Careful control of the individual grating strength has allowed us to obtain 17 laser lines, from 1527 to 1562 nm, with output flatness better than 3 dB. We also report on the optimization and characterization of the CW laser emission.

264 W output power at 1585 nm in Er–Yb codoped fiber laser using in-band pumping

We demonstrate a high-power cladding-pumped Er-Yb codoped fiber laser with 74% efficiency. A pump-limited output power of 264 W is obtained using in-band pumping at 1535 nm. We compare the efficiency of 1480 and 1535 nm pumping through numerical simulations and experimental measurements.

Chromatic dispersion measurement using a multiwavelength frequency-shifted feedback fiber laser

In this paper, we present the realization of a fiber laser source emitting simultaneously over 17 wavelengths spread over the whole C-band. An acoustooptic frequency shifter is placed in the laser ring cavity to suppress the cross-gain saturation effects of the erbium-doped fiber. The emitted wavelengths are fixed by a set of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs). A power uniformity reaching 6 dB is achieved by inscribing the FBGs while monitoring the laser output. We demonstrate the reliability of this laser as a source for characterization of optical components and networks by the measurement of optical fiber chromatic dispersion. The measurement is performed over the whole telecommunication C-band (1530-1560 nm) using the time-of-flight method. We perform the measurement on three different fibers with different levels of dispersion, namely a standard fiber, a nonzero dispersion shifted fiber, and a dispersion compensating fiber. The results are compared with measurements obtained using a standard network analyzer. The agreement between the two methods is better than /spl plusmn/1%, thus proving the suitability of the developed laser source for this application.

Theoretical analysis of a pulsed regime observed with a frequency-shifted-feedback fiber laser

We study a spontaneous Q-switched laser regime obtained with a multiwavelength frequency-shifted-feedback erbium-doped fiber laser. We have developed a traveling wave model to describe the dynamics of this ring cavity laser. The numerical results are in good agreement with experimental measurements. Furthermore, the model gives insight into the origin of this pulsed emission. Unlike in most Q-switched lasers, Q-switched operation does not rely on amplitude modulation of the net cavity gain but is produced by modulation of the optical frequency spectrum. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a fiber laser with frequency-modulated Q-switched operation.