Sergey A. Babin

Recent advances in fundamentals and applications of random fiber lasers

Random fiber lasers blend together attractive features of traditional random lasers, such as low cost and simplicity of fabrication, with high-performance characteristics of conventional fiber lasers, such as good directionality and high efficiency. Low coherence of random lasers is important for speckle-free imaging applications. The random fiber laser with distributed feedback proposed in 2010 led to a quickly developing class of light sources that utilize inherent optical fiber disorder in the form of the Rayleigh scattering and distributed Raman gain. The random fiber laser is an interesting and practically important example of a photonic device based on exploitation of optical medium disorder. We provide an overview of recent advances in this field, including high-power and high-efficiency generation, spectral and statistical properties of random fiber lasers, nonlinear kinetic theory of such systems, and emerging applications in telecommunications and distributed sensing.

High-efficiency generation in a short random fiber laser

We demonstrate a high-efficiency random lasing in a 850 m span of a phosphosilicate fiber. Random distributed feedback owing to the Rayleigh backscattering in the fiber enables narrowband generation with output power of up to 7.3 W at the Stokes wavelength λS = 1308 nm from 11 W of the pump power at λP = 1115 nm. The laser demonstrates unique generation efficiency. Near the generation threshold, more than 2 W of output power is generated from only 0.5 W of pump power excess over the generation threshold. At high pump power, the quantum conversion efficiency defined as a ratio of generated and pump photons at the laser output exceeds 100%. It is explained by the fact that every pump photon is converted into the Stokes photon far from the output fiber end, while the Stokes photons have lower attenuation than the pump photons.

Multicolour nonlinearly bound chirped dissipative solitons

The dissipative soliton regime is one of the most advanced ways to generate high-energy femtosecond pulses in mode-locked lasers. On the other hand, the stimulated Raman scattering in a fibre laser may convert the excess energy out of the coherent dissipative soliton to a noisy Raman pulse, thus limiting its energy. Here we demonstrate that intracavity feedback provided by re-injection of a Raman pulse into the laser cavity leads to formation of a coherent Raman dissipative soliton. Together, a dissipative soliton and a Raman dissipative soliton (of the first and second orders) form a two (three)-colour stable complex with higher total energy and broader spectrum than those of the dissipative soliton alone. Numerous applications can benefit from this approach, including frequency comb spectroscopy, transmission lines, seeding femtosecond parametric amplifiers, enhancement cavities and multiphoton fluorescence microscopy.

Evolution of dissipative solitons in a fiber laser oscillator in the presence of strong Raman scattering

As recently revealed, chirped dissipative solitons (DSs) generated in a long cavity fiber laser are subject to action of stimulated Raman scattering (SRS). Here we present theoretical and experimental study of the DS formation and evolution in the presence of strong SRS. The results demonstrate that the rising noisy Raman pulse (RP) acts not only as an additional channel of the energy dissipation destroying DS, but on the contrary can support it that results in formation of a complex of the bound DS and RP of comparable energy and duration. In the complex, the DS affords amplification of the RP, whereas the RP stabilizes the DS via temporal-spectral filtering. Stable 25 nJ SRS-driven chirped DS pulses are generated in all-fiber ring laser cavities with lengths of up to 120 m. The DS with duration up to 70 ps can be externally dechirped to <300 fs thus demonstrating the record compression factor.

Self-scanned single-frequency operation of a fiber laser driven by a self-induced phase grating

The selector-free single-frequency operation of an Yb-doped fiber laser with scanning in the range of ?20?nm is demonstrated. The frequency and intensity evolution is shown to be driven by a self-induced phase grating in the active fiber defined by gain saturation in a standing-wave. A theory has been developed that describes well the main features of the experiment and provides possibilities for optimization of laser parameters. Perspectives for utilizing the self-scanned laser in fundamental studies and practical applications are discussed.

Femtosecond Laser Inscription of Long-Period Fiber Gratings in a Polarization-Maintaining Fiber

The method of femtosecond laser inscription by slit-apertured beam is applied for fabrication of long-period fiber gratings in polarization-maintaining Panda-type fiber. Polarization properties as well as ambient refractive index sensitivity are investigated for the inscribed gratings. It is shown that the method allows us to create high-quality element for the use as spectral filter of high-power fiber laser as well as high-temperature sensor.

50 nJ 250 fs all-fibre Raman-free dissipative soliton oscillator

The regime of highly chirped dissipative solitons is a powerful technique for generating high-energy femtosecond pulses. In this letter we demonstrate a successful scaling of the pulse energy in the all-normal-dispersion all-fibre configuration by increasing the cavity length and the mode-field diameter of the fibre simultaneously. Using a PM fibre of 10 mkm core diameter, it appears possible to lengthen the cavity up to 40 m, thus generating highly chirped pulses with energy above 50 nJ, whereas further growth is limited by the Raman effect. We have also found that the Raman threshold and compressed pulse duration strongly depend on the bandwidth of the intracavity spectral filter. The threshold length is increased by a reduction of the filter bandwidth at the expense of larger compressed pulse duration (250 fs instead of 150 fs). Further energy upscaling by means of core enlargement is shown to be possible, but for that one should waive the all-fiber design, or use custom-made fibre components.

Simultaneous formation of ablative and thermochemical laser-induced periodic surface structures on Ti film at femtosecond irradiation

Formation of laser-induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) on the titanium surface at the presence of sharply focused fs radiation exhibits two different regimes. Conventional ablative LIPSS with low regularity are oriented orthogonally to the polarization direction of the incident beam, while thermochemical LIPSS with highly uniform periodicity are oriented along the polarization direction. These two types of LIPSS can co-exist and influence each other for arbitrary polarization and beam scanning directions. The observed regimes help to clarify mechanisms of LIPSS formation, as well as to form LIPSS of specific shapes and degrees of regularity.

Single-frequency Yb-doped fiber laser with distributed feedback based on a random FBG

Single-frequency operation of a 1.03 μm fiber laser with random distributed feedback (RDFB) is demonstrated. The laser cavity is based on a 4 cm long fiber Bragg grating (FBG) consisting of 10 homogeneous subgratings with random phase and amplitude of refractive index modulation inscribed in a polarization maintaining (PM) Yb-doped fiber. Such RDFB laser generates single longitudinal mode with output power up to 25 mW, which is 3.5 times higher than that for a DFB laser based on regular π-shifted FBG of the same length in the same fiber. The single-frequency linewidth is measured to be <100 kHz in both cases. The observed difference of the DFB and RDFB lasers is confirmed by numerical simulation showing different longitudinal distribution of intra-cavity radiation in these cases, analogous to those in the experiment.

Spectral comb of highly chirped pulses generated via cascaded FWM of two frequency-shifted dissipative solitons

Dissipative solitons generated in normal-dispersion mode-locked lasers are stable localized coherent structures with a mostly linear frequency modulation (chirp). The soliton energy in fiber lasers is limited by the Raman effect, but implementation of the intracavity feedback at the Stokes-shifted wavelength enables synchronous generation of a coherent Raman dissipative soliton. Here we demonstrate a new approach for generating chirped pulses at new wavelengths by mixing in a highly-nonlinear fiber of these two frequency-shifted dissipative solitons, as well as cascaded generation of their clones forming in the spectral domain a comb of highly chirped pulses. We observed up to eight equidistant components in the interval of more than 300u2009nm, which demonstrate compressibility from ~10u2009ps to ~300 fs. This approach, being different from traditional frequency combs, can inspire new developments in fundamental science and applications such as few-cycle/arbitrary-waveform pulse synthesis, comb spectroscopy, coherent communications and bio-imaging.