All-fiber polarization-maintaining system for noise suppression and signal amplification of picosecond pulses

Abstract

Abstract We present an all–fiber polarization-maintaining system, which consists of an ultralow-intensity-noise picosecond Yb mode-locked fiber oscillator, a Yb-doped fiber amplifier and a noise suppressor based on nonlinear optical loop mirror. After amplification and noise suppression, the optical power is as high as 190 mW, and the relative intensity noise (RIN) measured at an optical power of 30 mW is as low as −161.4 dB Hz−1, which is only 0.3 dB higher than the RIN of the oscillator. We also investigated the temperature dependence of the noise suppression performance, which suggests that guided acoustic-wave Brillouin scattering is one of the factors that limit the performance of the noise suppressor.