Suppression of multi-pulse formation in all-polarization-maintaining figure-9 erbium-doped fiber mode-locked laser*

Abstract

We report on a novel architecture to suppress the multi-pulse formation in an all-polarization-maintaining figure-9 erbium-doped fiber laser under high pump power. A 2×2 fiber coupler is introduced into the phase-biased nonlinear amplifying loop mirror to extract part of intracavity laser power as a laser output, and the dependence of output couple ratio of fiber coupler on the mode-locking state is experimentally investigated. The intracavity nonlinear effect is mitigated by lowering the intracavity laser power, which is conducive to avoiding the multi-pulse formation. In the meantime, the loss-imbalance induced by fiber coupler is helpful in improving the self-starting ability. With the proposed laser structure, the multiple pulse formation can be suppressed and high power single pulse train can be obtained. The laser emits three pulse trains which is convenient for some applications. Finally, the output power values of three ports are 5.3 mW, 51.3 mW, and 13.2 mW, respectively. The total single pulse output power is 69.8 mW, which is more than 10 times the result without OC2. The total slope efficiency is about 10.1%. The repetition rate of three pulse trains is 21.17 MHz, and the pulse widths are 2.8 ps, 2.63 ps, and 6.66 ps, respectively.