Active Compensation of Differential Group Delay in a Dual-Wavelength Pulsed Fiber Laser Driven by Quasi-Synchronous Pumping

Abstract

We report on synchronized dual-wavelength (1.07 μm and 1.24 μm) pulsed lasing driven by a quasi-synchronous primary pumping (at 0.98 μm) of an Yb-doped fiber laser, which incorporates also a P2O5-doped fiber as an intracavity Raman converter. The original method developed for such lasing does not require saturable absorbers (or optical modulators) and dispersion management. We demonstrated that the mechanism of the quasi-synchronous pumping enables the aforesaid stationary lasing in spite of significant differential group delay (DGD) inevitably acquired by light pulses with such different wavelengths during an intracavity round trip due to large normal chromatic dispersion. This DGD can be actively compensated at every round trip by the forced “acceleration” of the pulses at 1.07 μm in the Yb-doped active fiber due to the overrated frequency of the quasi-synchronous pumping at 0.98 μm. This mechanism is related to the particular pulse amplification dynamics in a such gain-modulated active fiber. The demonstrated approach to synchronized dual-wavelength pulsed lasing in a single-cavity fiber laser features remarkable simplicity and reliability. Our proof-of-concept setup enabled the stable two-wavelength generation of regular trains of nanosecond pulses with energy up to 34 nJ at equal repetition rates.