Smith K, Greer E J, Doran N J, Bird D M, Cameron K H
Opt Lett. 1992 Mar 15;17(6):408-10. doi: 10.1364/ol.17.000408.
We describe the pulse-amplification characteristics of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier and nonlinear loop mirror combination. The low switching power (less than a milliwatt peak) afforded by high amplifier gain and long loop length has permitted the efficient amplification (17 dB) and intensity filtering of mode-locked semi-conductor laser pulses. In addition, saturation of the amplifier gain is shown to result in amplification and shaping characteristics that are remarkably insensitive to the input power.
