Enhanced stability of dispersion-managed mode-locked fiber lasers with near-zero net cavity dispersion by high-contrast saturable absorbers

• Main Authors: Liu, H. H., Chow, K. K.
• Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Optics, optoelectronics, photonics
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/101872; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/18773
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

We experimentally investigate the stability of dispersion-managed mode-locked fiber lasers using carbon-nanotube-based saturable absorbers (SAs) with different modulation depths. An unstable operation region of the mode-locked fiber laser with near-zero net cavity dispersion is observed, where the laser produces random pulse burst rather than stable pulse train. Through the implementation of high-contrast SAs in the laser, the unstable region is found to be shrunk by ∼31.3% when the modulation depth of the SAs increases from 6.4% to 12.5%. The numerical simulation is consistent with the experimental observation.