Yandong Gong

High-energy laser pulse with a submegahertz repetition rate from a passively mode-locked fiber laser

We demonstrate an ultralong cavity, all-fiber, all-normal-dispersion Yb-doped fiber laser that is passively mode locked by a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM). Without any discrete dispersion-compensation components or conventional spectral filters, the SESAM works together with the strongly chirped pulse and the nonlinearity induced spectrum broadening to perform a filtering-equivalent function, thus stabilizing the mode locking. The laser generates 4.3 nJ stable mode-locked pulses with a 397 kHz fundamental repetition rate at a 1068 nm central wavelength.

High-energy wave-breaking-free pulse from all-fiber mode-locked laser system.

We demonstrated an all-fiber mode-locked laser system which generated high-energy wave-breaking-free pulses with low repetition rate. The system included a passively mode-locked fiber laser which acted as a master oscillator and an Yb-doped fiber amplifier. By increasing the cavity length of the laser, pulse energy could be significantly increased. According to different cavity length, wave-breaking-free pulse with 2.9 nJ-6.9 nJ pulse energy and 870 kHz-187 kHz repetition rate has been achieved from the master oscillator. Over 4 microJ pulse can be obtained after amplification.

Passive mode locking at harmonics of the free spectral range of the intracavity filter in a fiber ring laser.

We report the passive mode-locking at harmonics of the free spectral range (FSR) of the intracavity multi-channel filter in a fiber ring laser. The laser uses a sampled fiber Bragg grating (SFBG) with a free spectral range (FSR) of 0.8 nm, or 99 GHz at 1555 nm, and a length of highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber with low and flat dispersion. Stable picosecond soliton pulse trains with twofold to sevenfold enhancement in the repetition rate, relative to the FSR of the SFBG, have been achieved. The passive mode-locking mechanism that is at play in this laser relies on a dissipative four-wave mixing process and switching of repetition rate is realized simply by adjustment of the intracavity polarization controllers.

Bound soliton pulses in passively mode-locked fiber laser

A passively mode-locked soliton fiber ring laser was successfully demonstrated, and bound soliton pulses with an FWHM pulsewidth of 326 fs and fixed separation of 938 fs were first observed. The number of bound soliton pairs in the cavity can be controlled under lower pump power. The transmission effects were investigated by injecting bound soliton pulses into a single mode fiber.

Low-loss air-core polarization maintaining terahertz fiber

We propose a low-loss air-core polarization maintaining polymer fiber for terahertz (THz) wave guiding. The periodic arrangement of square holes with round corners in the cladding offers a bandgap effect for mode guiding. Numerical simulations show that the bandgap effect repels the modal power from the absorbent background polymers, resulting in a significant suppression of absorption loss of the polymers by a factor of more than 25. The phase-index birefringence of the proposed THz fiber is in the order of 10(-3).

Dual-wavelength 10-GHz actively mode-locked erbium fiber laser incorporating highly nonlinear fibers

We demonstrated a dual-wavelength actively mode-locked erbium-doped fiber ring laser with 0.8-nm wavelength spacing at a repetition rate of 10 GHz. A 1-km highly nonlinear fiber is introduced in the nonpolarization-maintaining cavity to suppress the gain competition of the homogeneously broadened gain medium in a self-driven manner. Output pulses at 1557.36 and 1558.17 nm are generated simultaneously. Amplitude fluctuations less than 0.45% and 1.7% of two wavelengths are measured. The corresponding timing jitters are less than 80 and 90 fs, respectively.

Design of double-pass discrete Raman amplifier and the impairments induced by Rayleigh backscattering

We report on the investigation of discrete Raman fiber amplifier in double-pass configuration based on the dispersion-compensated fiber and high reflection FBG. We proved in simulation and experiments that the double-pass configuration requires nearly 50% less pump power and the same fiber length to provide the same Raman gain and double-dispersion-compensation performance compared to the typical counter-pumped Raman amplifier. We also analyzed the equivalent noise figure (NF) and the Rayleigh backscattering impairments. The theoretical results shown that the impact of multipath interference (MPI) noise is the dominating limitation factor of this system operated at very high Raman gain region.

Polarization Maintaining Air-Core Bandgap Fibers for Terahertz Wave Guiding

A polarization-maintaining air-core bandgap polymer fiber is proposed for low-loss terahertz (THz) wave guiding. The polarized guided modes are confined in an asymmetric core by a bandgap of periodic arrangement of square holes with round corners in the cladding. The guiding properties, including transmission bandwidth, numerical aperture, phase-index birefringence, modal absorption loss, and bend loss, are systematically investigated. The influence of background polymers on guiding properties is demonstrated in detail. Numerical simulations reveal that, while maintaining a relatively high phase-index birefringence (of the order of 10-3 ), the THz fiber shows a significant suppression of absorption loss of the background polymers (by a factor of more than 25) due to the bandgap effect that repels the modal power from the absorbent polymers. The proposed THz fiber has potential for guiding intense THz waves for polarization-sensitive applications.

Spectral-resolved backreflection measurement of polarization mode dispersion in optical fibers

An improved backreflection technique is proposed to perform the spectral-resolved measurement of polarization mode dispersion (PMD) in optical fibers. This technique is based on the PMD dynamical equation and realized by measuring the polarization state evolutions of the reflected signal in both frequency and time domains. Two experimental setups, employing the far-end Fresnel reflection, are constructed to verify this technique. The agreement between the results of the proposed backreflection technique and the conventional forward technique is observed.

Generalized Mueller matrix method for polarization mode dispersion measurement in a system with polarization-dependent loss or gain

A generalized Mueller matrix method (GMMM) is proposed to measure the polarization mode dispersion (PMD) in an optical fiber system with polarization-dependent loss or gain (PDL/G). This algorithm is based on the polar decomposition of a 4X4 matrix which corresponds to a Lorentz transformation. Compared to the generalized Poincaré sphere method, the GMMM can measure PMD accurately with a relatively larger frequency step, and the obtained PMD data has very low noise level.