Dispersion independent mode-locked erbium-doped fiber laser with a chirped fiber Bragg grating

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate a dispersion-independent erbium-doped mode-locked fiber laser by incorporating a chirped fiber Bragg grating (CFBG) into the laser cavity. Our experimental results show that the fiber laser has similar output characteristics, no matter which section of the CFBG is connected to the laser cavity through a circulator, i.e., opposite dispersion is introduced into the laser cavity. Dispersion independent feature is attributed to the relatively large nonlinearity of the laser cavity with certain bandwidth. This enriches the laser dynamics and provides a new idea for the design of new lasers.