Wang Lizhen, Xu Peizhen, Li Yuhang, Han Jize, Guo Xin, Cui Yudong, Liu Xueming, Tong Limin
State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China.
State Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement Technology and Instruments, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
Sci Rep. 2018 Mar 16;8(1):4732. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-23027-9.
Mode-locked Yb-doped fiber lasers around 1 μm are attractive for high power applications and low noise pulse train generation. Mode-locked fiber lasers working in soliton and stretched-pulse regime outperform others in terms of the laser noise characteristics, mechanical stability and easy maintenance. However, conventional optical fibers always show a normal group velocity dispersion around 1 μm, leading to the inconvenience for necessary dispersion management. Here we show that optical microfibers having a large anomalous dispersion around 1 μm can be integrated into mode-locked Yb-doped fiber lasers with ultralow insertion loss down to -0.06 dB, enabling convenient dispersion management of the laser cavity. Besides, optical microfibers could also be adopted to spectrally broaden and to dechirp the ultrashort pulses outside the laser cavity, giving rise to a pulse duration of about 110 fs. We believe that this demonstration may facilitate all-fiber format high-performance ultrashort pulse generation at 1 μm and may find applications in precision measurements, large-scale facility synchronization and evanescent-field-based optical sensing.
波长在1μm左右的锁模掺镱光纤激光器对于高功率应用和产生低噪声脉冲序列具有吸引力。工作在孤子和展宽脉冲状态的锁模光纤激光器在激光噪声特性、机械稳定性和易于维护方面优于其他激光器。然而，传统光纤在1μm左右总是呈现正常的群速度色散，给必要的色散管理带来不便。在此我们表明，在1μm左右具有大反常色散的光学微纤维可以集成到锁模掺镱光纤激光器中，插入损耗低至-0.06dB，从而便于对激光腔进行色散管理。此外，光学微纤维还可用于在激光腔外对超短脉冲进行光谱展宽和去啁啾，产生约110fs的脉冲持续时间。我们相信，这一演示可能会促进全光纤形式的1μm高性能超短脉冲产生，并可能在精密测量、大型设施同步和基于倏逝场的光学传感中找到应用。
