Mode-locked fiber laser and its application in microwave photonics

• Main Author: Li, Nanxi.
• Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Optics, optoelectronics, photonics
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/49674
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In this project, first of all, the basic concepts of fiber laser technology are introduced. The motivation of conducting this project is stated. Followed by that, the fundamental knowledge, which is required to facilitate an understanding of the work conducted, is reviewed. The work in this project can be separated into two main parts. In the first part, the performance of a passively mode-locked fiber ring laser has been optimized. By systematically investigating the performance of the laser which incorporates saturation absorber, the trade-off between the long resonance cavity and pulse energy is understood. With a 700 m long optimized cavity length, 139.1 nJ pulse energy is achieved before amplification. In the second part, based on the understanding of the working mechanism of mode-locked fiber laser, an application of such kind of laser is demonstrated. It is shown that based on wavelength-to-time mapping process, arbitrary waveforms can be generated in both optical and electrical domains. By implementing a user controlled spectral filter, generation of Gaussian-shaped waveforms at 2.3 GHz, 4.6 GHz and 8 GHz, with sinusoidal amplitude modulation with periods 2.5 nm, 1.25 nm and 0.75 nm, respectively, is shown. Last but not the least, the conclusion and the possible future work of the whole project are mentioned.