All Polarization-maintaining Passively Mode-locked Ytterbium-doped Fiber Lasers, Behavior under Two Different Cavity Configurations

ABSTRACT

In this work, we review our recent investigations on the behavior of a polarization-maintaining passively mode-locked ytterbium-doped laser in two different cavity configurations, namely: fiber-ring (FR) and Fabry-Perot (FP). Opposed to standard configurations that rely on the use of strong filtering within the cavity by including an ad hoc component with this purpose, here the filtering action is solely performed by the spectral overlapping of the different components within the fiber lasers. We found that the lack of a specific filter within the cavity does not deteriorate the performance as compared with previous works. We also report the changes in the output light pulses when the net dispersion of the cavity was varied. Additionally, different lengths of an ad hoc anomalous polarization-maintaining (PM) photonic crystal fiber (PCF) were used as intracavity dispersion compensator, to shift the operation of the laser from net-normal to the net-anomalous regime. The shortest output light pulses [6 ps (FR) and 8 ps (FP)] were obtained when the net-cavity dispersion approached zero. Since the obtained light pulses were far to be transform-limited, we also discuss the possibility of out-of-cavity recompression by using the same PM-PCF mentioned above. After recompression, pulse widths of 3 ps were obtained, limited by the available length of PM PCF.

KEYWORDS:

• fiber laser
• ytterbium
• mode-locking
• polarization maintaining
• photonic crystal fibers

Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the European Union, project IPN-Bio (Ref.: H2020-MSCA-RISE-2019-872049), and by the Generalitat Valenciana of Spain (Ref.: PROMETEO/2019/048). C. Cuadrado-Laborde acknowledges the financial support from project PICT 2015-1828 (FONCYT, Argentina), PIP 11220150100607CO (CONICET, Argentina) and the Programa de Investigadores Invitados de la Universidad de Valencia (Spain).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

C. Cuadrado-Laborde

Christian Cuadrado-Laborde received his Ph.D. degree in physics from the National University of La Plata (UNLP, Argentina), and his Electrical and Electronic Engineer degree from the National University of San Luis (Argentina), in 2005 and 1998 respectively. In 2005, he joined the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET, Argentina). where he is an Independent Researcher leading the Optics & Photonics Group of the Institute of Physics Rosario (IFIR, Argentina). Since March 2016, he is also Full Professor of Physics at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina (UCA). He was awarded a research fellow position to join the optical fiber group of the University of Valencia (Spain) in 2008-2009. His current research interest includes fiber optics applications and fiber lasers. 

A. Díez

Antonio Díez received a Ph.D. degree in physics in 1998 from the University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain. During his Ph.D. degree, he carried out several stays at the Optoelectronic Research Centre, U.K. In 1999, he joined for two years the Optoelectronics Research Group at the University of Bath, Bath, U.K., where he was engaged in research on acousto-optic effects in standard fibers and in photonic crystal fibers. He is currently a Professor with the Department of Applied Physics, and a member of the Laboratory of Fibres Optics, both at the University of Valencia. His current research activities and interests include microstructured optical fibers, acousto-optics, fiber lasers, novel fiber-based light sources, optical microcavities, and optical sensors.

J.L. Cruz

José Luis Cruz was born in Cuenca (Spain) in 1964. He received the Ph. Degree in Physics from the University of Valencia (Spain) in 1992. Initially, his career focused on microwave devices for radar applications, afterwards, he joined the Optoelectronics Research Center of the University of Southampton (UK) where he was working in optical fiber fabrication and he is currently Professor of the Applied Physics Department at the University of Valencia where he is conducting research on fiber lasers and amplifiers, photonic crystal fibers, fiber gratings, microwave photonics, and sensors. He is co-inventor of six patents related to the above-mentioned topics, has published over 160 papers in international journals and more than 200 in conferences. He regularly acts as a reviewer for Elsevier, IEEE, and OSA journals, institutions for whom he has reviewed more than a hundred manuscripts. He has also been Vice-Dean of the Physics Faculty and Director of the Applied Physics Department for thirteen years.

M.V. Andrés

Miguel V. Andrés was born in Valencia (Spain) in 1957. He received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the University of Valencia, Spain, in 1979 and 1985, respectively. Since 1983, he has successively served as Assistant Professor, Lecturer, and Professor in the Department of Applied Physics, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain. After a postdoctoral stay (1984-1987) at the Department of Physics, University of Surrey, U.K., he founded the Laboratory of Fiber Optics at the University of Valencia (www.uv.es/lfo). His current research interests include photonic crystal fibers, in-fiber acousto-optics, fiber lasers, and new fiber-based light sources, fiber sensors, optical microcavities, microwave photonics, and waveguide theory. His research activity includes an increasing number of collaborations with Latin American universities and research institutes of Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil among others. From 2006 to 2015, he was a member of the External Evaluation Committee of the Centro de Investigaciones en Óptica, México. In 1999, he was awarded the Premio Cooperación Universidad-Sociedad 1999 of the Universidad de Valencia. Since 2009, he is a member (Académico Correspondiente) of the Real Academia de Ciencias de Zaragoza.